Canada’s Mines Branch and Its Synthetic Fuel Program for Energy Independence ANTHONY N. STRANGES In the mid-1970s many of the industrialized nations started major synthetic fuel programs aimed at increasing their domestic petroleum production. The reason for their concern was the 1973—74 Arab oil embargo, which resulted in a fivefold jump in petroleum prices from about $2 to $10 a barrel. As shocking as the embargo was, later developments continued to aggravate the situation. The 1979—81 Iranian hostage crisis tripled prices, to $30 a barrel; a skyrocketing petroleum demand worldwide soon pushed them into the $40 range. But the 1970s were not the first time that industrialized nations had tried to lessen or even eliminate their dependence on costly and sometimes erratic supplies of imported petroleum and move toward energy independence. By the 1920s the introduction of the airplane, the mass production of automobiles, and the conversion of ships from coal to oil fired showed clearly that petroleum was the fuel of the future. A consequence of this change was the construction in the late 1920s and the early 1930s of the first coal liquefaction (hydrogena tion) plants in petroleum-poor Germany and Britain. A similar concern emerged in the United States after World War II. The war showed how quickly the United States could consume huge quantities of petroleum and led the Bureau of Mines to establish a coal-to-oil demonstration program that ran from 1949 to 1953. In Canada, officials at the Mines Branch had worried about Canada’s lack of significant petroleum deposits since the first decade of this century. They too believed that production of synthetic liquid fuel might eliminate possible energy shortages. Initially, the Mines Dr. Stranges is a member of the Department of History at Texas A&M University, where he teaches the history of science and the history of science in America. He is completing a book on the history of synthetic fuel development. He wishes to acknowledge financial support in preparing this article from the National Science Foundation (grant SES-8520001), Texas A&M’s Center for Energy and Mineral Resources, and the Canadian Studies Faculty Research Grant Program. He also thanks Kurt Irgolic, Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M, for valuable comments on the manuscript.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/91/3203-0003$01.00 521 522 Anthony N. Stranges Branch, at its Fuel Testing Station in Ottawa, concentrated on high-pressure coal liquefaction, but by the 1940s the emphasis had shifted to hydrogenating bitumen extracted from Alberta’s vast tar sands to give a high-quality oil. The Mines Branch assumed a leadership role in Canadian synthetic liquid fuel research. The government actively supported the research, and, in this respect, the Mines Branch program resembled those that emerged in Germany, Britain, Japan, and the United States. But synthetic fuel research elsewhere reached the commercial stage; in Canada it failed to progress beyond the pilot plant. The failure was not technological. Rather, it was a result of the Mines Branch’s commitment to basic research instead of commercial development of low-grade reserves, particularly Alberta’s tar sands, Canada’s most abundant natural resource.1 No study has yet examined the technological evolution and economics of the Mines Branch’s synthetic fuel program. This article provides both a synthesis and analysis of its development with emphasis on the prominent role that synthetic fuel that is obtained from Alberta’s tar sands seems destined to play in Canada’s energy future. Early Concernfor Fuel Supply The Geology and Mines Act of April 27, 1907, officially established the Department of Mines with its two divisions, the Geological Survey 'Only a few countries such as Germany, Britain, the United States, Japan, and Canada attempted to establish synthetic fuel industries. The literature on their development is rather limited, much of it on the German synthetic fuel industry. See, e.g., Harald Beck, “Zur Geschichte der Kohleverflussigung,” Kultur und Technik 7 (1983): 164-73; Manfred Rasch, “On the Prehistory of the Liquefaction of Coal up to 1945,” in Energy in History, ed. Hans-Joachim Braun and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf, 1984), pp. 478-86; Anthony N. Stranges, “Friedrich Bergius and...