Upgrading to 1944

Until the late 1930s, the processing of oil sands at Bitumount halted with the separation stage. The only product of Robert Fitzsimmons’s plant was bitumen. Time and again, as he attempted to market this product, he was confronted with the problem of quality control. His bitumen was essentially an unprocessed raw material, which varied depending on the make-up of the sand coming through the plant. Fitzsimmons realised that he had to take control of the composition of his product.

From 1932 until 1936, Fitzsimmons struggled to raise the funds necessary to build a refinery at Bitumount. This was a tall order, as the International Bitumen Company plant was shut down and generating no income.

In 1934, Fitzsimmons described the desired facility as a “steam distillation type. We are not going to do any cracking at this time.” Somehow, he was finally able to scrape together enough money to hire staff in May 1936 to design and build a refinery. In his letter hiring Harry F. Everard to oversee the construction project, Fitzsimmons emphasized the need for economy:

As mentioned in my last letter our finances make it necessary to erect as cheap a job as possible “and yet do the work.” This can be decided after you come here. The one thing sure is that we are going to build some kind of refinery this summer. We are going to expand into mass production as fast as conditions warrant thereafter.

Troubles plagued the construction of the refinery. Doubtless the modest budget was a factor. Second-hand parts, workers lacking in the appropriate skills, and designs that couldn’t handle bitumen all caused delays and break-downs. Eventually, the plant was finished. Tom Morimoto, who was the camp radio operator and worked in the plant in 1937, described the refinery in his book, Breaking Trail:

The refinery consisted of a wood-fired furnace, a small, six-tray distillation tower, and an overhead condenser. The bitumen from the separation plant was pumped through the 3-inch (8-cm) furnace tubes and then sent to the distillation tower. This tower separated the lighter compounds, which came out from the top of the tower.

These compounds were sent to a condenser, which consisted of coils of 1-inch (2.5-cm) pipe over which river water was sprayed to condense the diesel oil product. The material from the bottom of the tower was the asphalt product.

Fitzsimmons claimed that the plant was in working order, and it did produce some upgraded oil, but a review by a civil engineer in 1938 pointed out many deficiencies and expressed dismay with the design of the refinery. Modest as it was, the cost of this construction project was more than the International Bitumen Company Ltd. could handle. The company ceased activity in 1939, and, by 1940, it was struck from the Alberta Register.