Industry giants' plans not meeting guidelines: Pembina

Carol Christian, December 1, 2009, Fort McMurray Today--An environmental think-tank is critical of documents filed to the oilsands regulator from six operators, saying only two meet new rules in place.

The Pembina Institute conducted what it called a comprehensive review of the documents filed with the Energy Resources Conservation Board by Sept. 30.

The documents were required under a new directive — Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes — announced by the ERCB in February because industry members failed to meet set targets.

However, Pembina does acknowledge prior statements by the regulator that if its own review of the submitted plans reveal shortcomings, the plans will be returned to the operators for revisions to bring them up to expectations.

The ERCB has been conducting a "thorough and rigorous" review of the plans, posted on the regulator's website, since they were submitted, ERCB spokesman Davis Sheremata said this morning.

Under the new directive, operators are now required to reduce wet tailings through "fines" captured in dedicated disposal areas, as well as building and managing the disposal areas.

Fines are mineral solids with particle sizes equal to or less than 44 micrometres. Similar to tailings ponds, dedicated disposal areas handle specifically captured fines, which are more solid than wet tailings, and are trafficable, meaning people can walk on the areas sooner.

Pembina spokesman Simon Dyer said his organization does have faith in those commitments from the ERCB.

"We are confident the ERCB will enforce the law and clearly, that needs to be communicated."

Given that when the ERCB released the new directive, it talked "very sternly" about its strength and the commitment of the regulator to strictly enforce it, he said he as surprised to see such inadequate plans by the operators.

Pembina's review found the plans submitted by Suncor Energy for its Millennium and Steepbank North mines and Fort Hills Energy (Suncor Energy, UTS Energy and Teck Cominco) for the future Fort Hills mine met fine particle capture and trafficability requirements.

Plans submitted by CNRL, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada and Syncrude Canada, according to the review, failed to meet both requirements.

With an estimation toxic tailings will increase to 1.1 trillion litres by 2020 according to the submitted industry plans, Dyer said that number is the result of adding all the company numbers together.

However, Sheremata refuted the 1.1 trillion litres, saying that "projection is several degrees to high. I want to assure people that that's not going to happen."