Abstract This article aims to present selected episodes of the scientific and entrepreneurial activities realized in the Majella oil district, Abruzzo, central Italy, between the 1830s and the 1940s. Majella had an important role in the early process of modernization of the Italian oil industry. As we will see, the application of science and technology in the wellsite, a pioneering integrated production model, unexpected environmental constraints and the longevity of the business made Abruzzo into a benchmark. Between 1864 and 1865, the pattern of the secular and unchanged local manufacturing of bitumen, based on human labour and the manual harvesting of the mineral from natural outcrops, was outdone by two new conditions: the study of subsoil and the utilization of mechanical drilling. These early records of paid oil consultancies and the utilization of steam power were followed by the impressive, but short and illusory, peak in production never recorded before. In the following decades, the Majella district was very active and drew the attention of several international operators, in spite of the declining production of crude – compensated for by the yield of bitumen and shales – and the unstoppable rising of the Emilian Apennine ridge in the provinces of Pavia, Piacenza and Parma. From the early 1900s, foreign companies gradually reduced investment in new exploration in Maiella, where the core production was now bitumen and asphalts rather than oil and, by the 1920s, most of the industry was controlled by government authorities and local business. The advent of Fascism in the 1930s saw Maiella become a stronghold of the autarchy’s policies; later, the improvised and inefficient national fuel planning of Italy at the start of the Second World War saw Abruzzo’s oil and bitumen supplies become a strategic resource. The Maiella district has the longest production history in Italy and today geoscientists are surveying and interpreting the geology of the area with a new perspective.

Abstract The onset of hydrocarbon exploration and production activity in Spain dates back to 1860, mainly consisting of rudimentary mining of tar sands, asphalts and bituminous shales. Petroleum exploration drilling started properly in 1900 by simply locating wells in the vicinity of petroleum impregnations at the surface, often with little or no geological input. Until 1940, most of these early exploration wells were shallow tests (less than 500 m deep), commonly operated by small private companies with foreign investment, but no oil and gas accumulations were found. Systematic hydrocarbon exploration in Spain began in 1940 after the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Two oil companies led these activities: CAMPSA, a state-run petroleum monopoly established in 1927; and CEPSA, a fully private Spanish company founded in 1929, which created the exploration subsidiary CIEPSA in 1940. However, the poor economic situation in Spain, the currency shortage and the international embargo after the Civil War made it very difficult to import any rig capable of deep drilling until the late 1940s. During the early 1950s, the domestic and international position of Spain started to improve. Slowly, foreign hydrocarbon exploration companies (especially German and American) began to form partnerships with national and Spanish private companies. They conducted the acquisition of the first seismic reflection surveys and were responsible for a considerable increase in deep drilling and pioneering borehole logging. Noteworthy amongst these were the intense activities of the VALDEBRO, a consortium formed in 1952 by American companies and the state. In 1960, 100 years after the initiation of petroleum production in Spain, the first commercial success was obtained with the discovery of dry gas in the Castillo-1 well, drilled by CIEPSA in the onshore Cantabrian–Basque Basin. This find was later complemented by the oil discovery at Ayoluengo in 1964 by a joint venture led by CAMPSA and which still remains the only commercial oil field discovered onshore Spain.

The oil-sand ores of northern Alberta provide a significant proportion of the overall energy portfolio for North America. Surprisingly, the presence of nano-sized clay minerals plays a defining role both in the extraction of bitumen and in tailings management. Although seemingly insignificant in size, naturally occurring clay minerals present in the oil sand ores of northern Alberta create significant challenges in all aspects of bitumen extraction and recovery, processing of oil sand ores, and management of tailings. Although a significant body of knowledge exists in relation to the characterization of ‘oil-sands clay minerals,’ much of this work has focused on the identification of the clay minerals present and not on their respective surface chemistries. This chapter focuses on some of the unique structural features of the clay minerals found in the oil sands and their respective surface chemistries.