Franklin’s lost expedition. The first government-sponsored survey of the oil sands was initiated in 1875 by John Macoun, and in 1883, G.C. Hoffman of the Geological Survey of Canada tried separating the bitumen from oil sand with the use of water and reported that it separated readily. In 1888, Dr. Robert Bell, the director of the Geological Survey of Canada, reported to a Senate Committee that “The evidence … points to the existence in the Athabasca and Mackenzie valleys of the most extensive petroleum field in America, if not the world.”
In 1926, Dr. Karl Clark of the University of Alberta perfected a hot water separation process which became the basis of today’s thermal extraction process. Several attempts to implement it had varying degrees of success, but it was 1967 before the first commercially viable operation began with the opening of the Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) plant using surfactants in the separation process developed by Dr. Earl W. Malmberg of Sun Oil Company.
Oil sands production
Commercial production of oil from the Athabasca oil sands began in 1967, when Great Canadian Oil Sands Limited (then a subsidiary of Sun Oil Company but now an independent company known as Suncor Energy) opened its first mine, producing 30,000 barrels per day (4,800 m3/d) of synthetic crude oil. Development was inhibited by declining world oil prices, and the second mine, operated by the Syncrude consortium, did not begin operating until 1978, after the 1973 oil crisis sparked investor interest. However, the price of oil subsided afterwards, and although the 1979 energy crisis caused oil prices to peak again, introduction of the National Energy Program by Pierre Trudeau discouraged foreign investment in the Canadian oil
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