History Of Alberta Oilsands

1719 Wa-pa-su, of the Cree First Nations, brings a sample of oilsands to the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Churchill. 1778 Peter Pond is the first white man to enter the rich Athabasca fur-trading country. He describes the heavy oil outcroppings along the river and notes the natives' use of the material to waterproof canoes. 1790 Explorer Alexander MacKenzie provides the first recorded description of the Athabasca oilsands as "bituminous fountains" up to six metres deep. 1870 Henry John Moberly establishes a Hudson's Bay Company post, naming it Fort McMurray, after Chief Factor William McMurray. 1913 A survey by Sydney C. Ells of the Mines Branch sees the potential for using asphalt reserves as a road-surfacing material. Ells discovers that a plant in California separated bitumen from the sand with hot water. Ells leads a federal-provincial-municipal government experiment separating oil from sand. 1921 Thomas Draper secures a lease, opens a quarry and starts the McMurray Asphaltum & Oil Company. It is destroyed by fire. The same year, the Alcan Oil Company, formed by New York City policemen, drills for oil in the Bitumount area north of Fort McMurray. This lease is taken over by Robert Fitzsimmons in 1922. 1923 Dr. Karl A. Clark of the Research Council of Alberta and Sidney M. Blair, build a small separation unit in the basement of the University of Alberta power plant. 1925 Thomas Draper begins experimenting with oilsands as a paving material, untreated or mixed with asphalt. He lands several road paving contracts, including sections of pavement in Medicine Hat and Parliament Hill. 1930 Max Ball, with his group (Basil Jones, James McClave) applies for oilsands leases. The properties would become Abasand Oils Ltd. 1930 Fitzsimmons makes the first sale of commercially produced bitumen in Edmonton. The Bitumount plant expands and a new refinery is constructed. By 1949 the province takes over Bitumount. 1943 The federal government takes over the upgraded Abasand plant under the War Measures Act. 1953 The Great Canadian Oil Sands consortium is formed from Abasand Oils, Canadian Oils Ltd., Champion's Oil Sands Ltd., and Sun Oil Co. 1962 The Great Canadian Oil Sands group contracts with Bechtel Co. to construct a large-scale commercial plant in the Mildred-Ruth Lakes deposit. 1964 Syncrude Canada Ltd. is incorporated. 1974 Syncrude becomes a joint public-private venture, sponsored by Esso Resources, Gulf Canada, Canada Cities Service, Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas, and the Alberta, Ontario and Canadian governments. Construction of the Syncrude plant near the GCOS plant north of Fort McMurray takes four years. 1979 The Great Canadian Oil Sands is renamed Suncor Inc. 1995 Both Suncor and Syncrude announce plans for expansion. Syncrude's new Aurora mine site is 35 kilometres northeast of the Mildred Lake site. Suncor's Steepbank Mine will be located on the east side of the Athabasca River. 2003 Production begins at the $5.7-billion Athabasca Oil Sands Project owned by Shell Canada, Chevron Canada and Western Oil Sands. It produces about 155,000 barrels of oil per day.