OPTI was founded as Ormat Process Technologies Inc. in 1999 by Israeli energy company Ormat Industries, which had developed the OrCrude process in the 1990s. Ormat was approached by Calgary-based Nexen, who sent a delegation to Israel to supervise a test of the process. However, using OrCrude in the oil sands appeared uneconomical to Nexen, who withdrew. Ormat instead contacted Calgary's Suncor Energy, with whom it founded OPTI as a 50-50 venture, with the Nexen delegation's head, Jim Arnold, as its first employee. Suncor's land at Burnt Lake was used by Ormat to build an OrCrude demonstration plant, using oil supplied by Suncor.