Book details Shell’s early bid for oilsands

While there were no gushers of oil in the Athabasca region in the early 1900s, prospectors and developers who saw crude forming ponds on the land and seeping from river banks believed there must be a mammoth amount of the stuff — just below the surface.

And while dozens of small companies were formed in Edmonton to go north and tap into the imagined wealth, the largest oil company in the world tried to lock up all the northern petroleum reserves for itself through an audacious attempt by Britain to strong-arm its former colony.

“Royal Dutch Shell wanted a monopoly in 1916, and this became a big political issue,” said Joyce Hunt, author of the just-published Local Push Global Pull: the Untold History of the Athabaska Oil Sands.

“I found material that has never been accessed before.”

Hunt’s self-published history of the oilsands between 1900 and 1930 has won the support of both oil industry leaders and people curious about the pioneer days of what was to become one of the greatest oil resources on the planet.

Hunt explores the world of Count Alfred von Hammerstein, a Klondike gold rush traveller who ended up in Fort Mcmurray and managed to obtain full ownership rights (including mineral rights) to four freehold areas — each about one mile by three miles in size — which are now owned by Suncor Energy. They’re in the Steepbank mine area east of the Athabasca River and the Tar Island area.

Early developers didn’t know what to do with the sticky oilsands. Some was shipped south by boat and later train, and ended up as asphalt. Ada Boulevard in the Highlands neighbourhood was paved with a sample in 1911.

Alberta knew it had a great resource, but it took another two decades before Karl Clark perfected a hot-water method to actually produce oil. The first commercial plant, Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor), didn’t open until 1966.