June 2006 ISSUE
readings
Letters Chronicle Later Years
of Karl Clark’s Work
Athabasca Oil Sands
From Laboratory to Production — The Letters of Karl A. Clark, 1950-1966.
Geoscience Publishing,
Box 79088
Sherwood Park, AB
T8A 5S3
geosci@telusplanet.net
 |
Lore says that once the bitumen sticks to your boots, it stays forever. And in the case of the late Dr. Karl A. Clark, the man who came up with a hot water process for turning the oil sands into a useable resource, some of it ended up on his daughter’s boots, too.
That’s turned out to be a good thing for posterity.
Mary Clark Sheppard, a 1949 arts graduate from the University of Alberta, loved hearing her father’s tales from the field and laboratory. Her affection for Dr. Clark, and her interest in his work and the process he invented, led her to compile and edit the contents of Oil Sands Scientist — The Letters of Karl A. Clark, 1920-1949, published by the University of Alberta Press.
Now, Mrs. Sheppard has done it again. Taking over where the 1989 book ended,
her newest offering is Athabasca Oil Sands, From Laboratory to Production — The
Letters of Karl A. Clark, 1950-1966.
Published by Geoscience Publishing with financial support from the Alberta Historical
Resources Foundation of Alberta Community Development, the latest book chronicles
the bridge to actual industrial production. It begins at a turning point for
the oil sands, when industry has realized its commercial potential as a new source
of crude.
The book’s predecessor describes the fundamental research, the plants Dr. Clark designed to prove his process, and the first commercial oil sands enterprises undertaken in the 1930s — the Bitumount and Abasand plants.
Dr. Clark arrived at the University of Alberta from the Mines Branch in Ottawa, becoming the first full-time employee of the Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta, established in January 1921. It’s now known as the Alberta Research Council.
In 1929 Dr. Clark received the patent for a hot water extraction process for separating oil from oil sands.
After the first book, much of the Clark story remained to be told. The new collection describes Dr. Clark’s further research in oil sands oil, the geology of the deposit, and the engineering principles of machinery required to give expression, in commercial quantities, to his process.
It also provides insight into how the first technical and economic survey of the oil sands was put together in 1950 by S.M. Blair, and how the report led to entrepreneurial investment and a commercial industry, which began in 1967.
Today, what some call the world’s greatest industrial project owes much of its success to Dr. Clark and his research.
Mrs. Sheppard writes in her introduction: “The slow and painful birth of this important industry may, perhaps rightly, no longer be a matter of current interest to those charged with managing its present challenges and future development. Nevertheless, early beginnings are of historic interest and deserve to be recorded.
“Karl Clark has been referred to by some as the ‘father of the oil sands,’ and this work may help posterity to judge whether the label is justified.”