Water Depletion

Alberta Chamber of Resources says Alberta to change wetlands plan

jessie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:50:20 -0700

Alberta Chamber of Resources says Alberta to change wetlands plan

John Cotter, Canadian Press, March 10 2010--A group representing oilsands and other resource companies says it has convinced the Alberta government to change a plan that would force corporations to spend big money to restore wetlands ruined by mining projects.

Conservationists say if the statement by the Alberta Chamber of Resources is true, it would make a mockery of the province's promise to develop the oilsands in an environmentally responsible manner.

"The province has agreed to three of the four changes to the proposed wetlands policy that (the chamber) suggested in a letter ... we delivered to the Ministry of Environment," says a report posted on the chamber's website.

"While the wetlands policy has not yet been implemented, these changes may save literally billions of dollars for our members in the future." Alberta currently has no policy to protect or restore wetlands that are ruined by resource development in the northern half of the province, including the wetlands-rich oilsands region. After years of study, the Alberta Water Council submitted a report to the province saying that vacuum could no longer continue. The council said wetlands are vital to migrating ducks and waterfowl, songbirds, caribou and the overall environmental health of the Athabasca River basin.

The report, submitted 18 months ago, called for a "no-net-loss" policy for wetlands. It recommended that companies that destroy such areas should be required to either restore them, bolster a nearby depleted wetland or build a new one somewhere else in the province. The government was supposed to have rolled out the policy last spring.

But two organizations in the 25-member water council opposed the recommendation for mandatory action - the Alberta Chamber of Resources and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Together they wrote dissenting letters in 2008 asking the province to making wetlands restoration discretionary. In its letter, the chamber also said it opposed the concept of "no-net-loss" and suggested the government delay taking action. It also recommended the province not include any existing oilsands projects in any wetlands policy.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in its letter said the cost of such a policy "could exceed billions of dollars." Some members of the water council say they are worried the industry's lobbying efforts have won over a government eager to appease Alberta's slumping resource sector. "We are very much concerned that it has been significantly undermined," said Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association.

"We are worried that by caving in to one sector's request, we would weaken our wetland policy across the province."

Other members of the council share those concerns. They're also unhappy over the delay of a policy that has been in the works for four years.

"We are hoping it won't be watered down, but we are getting some signals from industry. The Alberta Chamber of Resources is claiming victory over the policy," said Pat Kehoe, manager of conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited.

"Any change that would lessen the imperative of the policy or weaken the application of the policy would be of great concern to us. We have huge wetland resources in this province, but we also have had huge wetlands impacts. We need wetlands protected and restored."

Brad Anderson, executive director of the resources chamber, says its position on wetlands was posted on the group's website last year to update members and may now be out of date - even though it remains posted. "We don't know where the government is going with this wetlands policy or when it is going to come out," he said.

Environment Minister Rob Renner says the province hasn't made a final decision. He wouldn't commit to an announcement this year even though the policy is already at least one year overdue. Renner said balancing the need to protect the environment without thwarting resource development is so complex it will take more time for the plan to wind its way through the government before anything is approved.

"It is a misrepresentation to say that Alberta Environment has agreed (to change the proposed policy). We accept arguments that some have made. We take those arguments and we try and maintain that balance," he said. "At the end of the day, there needs to be a clear policy that says that there are consequences that have to be acknowledged and have to be dealt with when wetlands are destroyed."

Syncrude duck death trial underway

jessie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:10:42 -0800

Syncrude duck death trial underway

CBC News, March 1, 2010--Oilsands giant Syncrude returned to court Monday morning to face charges laid in the deaths of 1,600 ducks in a northern Alberta tailings pond in April 2008. Dozens of binders full of background material were stacked on tables and cabinets in the St. Albert, Alta., courtroom.

Prosecutors say it could take months to get through the evidence. Two months have been set aside for the trial. During the first week, the Crown plans to call to the stand the first responders after the ducks landed on the pond. The Crown also plans to call scientists to testify about what is in the tailings ponds and how harmful it is to wildlife.

The Crown is expected to establish what the industry standards are and what other companies do to avoid these types of incidents. 'Tailings ponds themselves are on trial,' says environmentalist

Speaking outside the courthouse on Monday, Sierra Club Prairie director Lindsay Telfer said the case goes far beyond the ducks and the "tailings ponds themselves are on trial." "I think that this incident specifically showed the world just how toxic the tailings ponds are," she said.

"We know now that the waters have killed 1,600 ducks, we know that those waters are leaking into the Athabasca [River] and we know downstream communities have significant health problems."

Telfer the government needs to hold companies like Syncrude responsible.

"This case specifically has skyrocketed the tar sands into the international global spotlight and I think it will continue to do so." Robert White, the lawyer representing Syncrude, also spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. "You will find it both distressing because you will hear a great deal about what happened to these ducks but also enlightening as you learn why it happened and why it won't ever again," he said.

Defence asks judge to consider recusal

The trial was briefly delayed Monday morning as White filed a motion requesting the judge consider removing himself from the case. White said provincial court Judge Ken Tjosveld was a senior Alberta Crown prosecutor and worked with prosecutors now involved in the trial. White said he didn't believe Tjosveld was biased, but that it was important there be no perception of bias. Tjosveld dismissed the application.

Case could set precedent

Syncrude is facing charges under federal and provincial laws in relation to the deaths of 1,600 ducks in a northern Alberta tailings pond in April 2008. The migrating ducks landed on the pond, north of Fort McMurray, and sank to the bottom after being coated in toxic sludge.

Air cannons used to scare migratory birds away from the tailings pond were not in place. The company has pleaded not guilty. It doesn't dispute that the ducks perished in the tailings pond, but says charges won't accomplish anything. Syncrude also says it did everything it could to keep birds away from the tailings pond. The company says a late winter storm prevented them from putting bird deterrents in place and the birds migrated earlier than usual. Environmentalists and those in the oil industry are watching the trial closely because it could set a precedent for tailings pond operators.

The federal charge Syncrude is facing falls under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. The law is generally applied only to hunters and companies that dump hazardous chemicals or oil into the water. It has never been applied to a tailings pond operator. If found guilty, Syncrude could face fines of up to $1 million.

Poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas bubbles up in oilsands tailings pond during company reclamation efforts

jessie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:51:47 -0800

Poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas bubbles up in oilsands tailings pond during company reclamation efforts

Hanneke Brooymans, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 2010--The industry is working on ways to reduce the size of tailings ponds. Shown here is the Base Mine Lake tailings pond at Syncrude's extraction and upgrading facility at Mildred Lake, taken in 2008. Efforts to clean up one of northern Alberta's biggest environmental messes -- oilsands tailings ponds -- have created another problem: air pollution that includes a deadly poisonous gas. Air emissions monitors in the area around the Fort McMurray oilsands have been picking up a steady increase in sulphur-based pollutants, including poisonous hydrogen sulphide.

Officials from industry and Alberta Environment have many theories about why emissions are increasing, but by far the most surprising is the link to the ongoing reclamation of a Suncor tailings pond. "It's like when you step into a wetland, all these bubbles come up because you disturbed the bottom," says Preston McEachern, head of science, research and innovation for Alberta Environment.

The Journal recently checked the statistics for hydrogen sulphide emissions in the Fort McMurray area, and checked in with government, industry and affected residents about what is happening and how they feel.

Q: How did the increase in hydrogen sulphide emissions come to light?

A: In 2006, the monitoring network in the area started picking up spikes of hydrogen sulphide in the air that passed the concentration level the government considers acceptable. In the last five years, the number of times hydrogen sulphide levels have exceeded the guidelines has skyrocketed. The worst station counted four infractions of the province's daily concentration guideline five years ago. Last year, there were 76 days in which the air concentration broke the guideline. (For more details, see table that details the infractions.)

Q: Should this be a concern for the people working and living in the Fort McMurray area?

A: The provincial government and the companies in the area note the concentrations are well below occupational health and safety exposure limits. The guideline being broken is set at what's called a nuisance level, which is approximately the level at which the gas can be smelled. However, there continues to be a debate about the effects of long-term exposure to low concentrations of the gas.

Sheldon Roth, a neuroscientist in the University of Calgary's toxicology division, has studied hydrogen sulphide. "My bottom line," he says, "would be there's not enough information whatsoever. We just don't know. And there's not a lot of research in that area."

Alberta Health and Wellness has just started a review of the scientific literature investigating health effects associated with low-level, chronic hydrogen sulphide exposure. The ministry says it's doing the review in response to concerns expressed about low-level exposure.

Q: What do local residents think of the problem?

A: Fort McKay, a community of about 600, sits about 15 kilometres north of Syncrude and about 30 kilometres north of Suncor. More than half the time, the wind is blowing from the south-southeast, so people in the community smell odours on a fairly regular basis, said Lisa Schaldemose, executive director of Fort McKay's Industry Relations Corporation. She said community members noticed an increase in odour incidents last spring. One day this past summer her office received 60 calls from upset residents. "The community's very concerned about their air quality and particularly how it relates to their health and how it's relating to the health of the land, because these people are still, to some extent, living off the land." Schaldemose said though they have good relationships with companies in the area, the community has its own air quality expert analyzing data from monitors in the area. He will be giving the community a briefing on his findings this spring.

Q: What is being done about this issue?

A: The provincial government began investigating the issue in 2006 when it noticed the upward trend, says Al Montpellier, Alberta Environment's regional compliance manager for the northern region. "That's when we started to look at the different sources in the area and really started to work with the companies and say, 'Where is this coming from?' " he says.

In 2007, the province issued two environmental protection orders, one against Syncrude in August and one against Suncor in December, in an attempt to get hydrogen sulphide emissions under control.

Syncrude closed its order last year, says company spokeswoman Cheryl Robb. That order was related to hydrogen sulphide emissions that came from an effluent pond, not a tailings pond. The pond is used for waste water during an unexpected shutdown, not a tailings pond used during regular operations. Suncor's order is still open. Montpellier says the company handed in its report in January, but the ministry still has to go through it to decide if the company has done enough.

The federal government requires companies to report their emissions each year, but the actual regulation of air quality is in the hands of the province. However, the National Pollutant Registry Inventory, which is available to the public online, showed a dramatic increase in the amount of hydrogen sulphide emissions reported by Suncor -- from 31 tonnes in 2007 to 708 tonnes in 2008, the latest available year. Syncrude, on the other hand, reduced its hydrogen sulphide from 129 tonnes to 62 tonnes.

Q: Why is Suncor reporting so much more hydrogen sulphide?

A: There have been no actual increases in hydrogen sulphide emissions between 2007 and 2008 by the company, says spokeswoman Sneh Seetal. Instead, when the company took samples of emissions from the ponds and had them tested, it discovered it had previously under-reported the hydrogen sulphide emissions. What they previously thought was largely a group of compounds called volatile organic compounds turned out largely to be hydrogen sulphide.

Q: Why is Suncor allowed to emit that much more hydrogen sulphide than Syncrude?

A: Alberta Environment doesn't actually put a limit on hydrogen sulphide emissions in the approvals obtained by the companies. Instead, it relies on the air monitoring network to pick up problems with pollutants, and then it acts on that information. Suncor is not convinced the air monitors are picking up strictly hydrogen sulphide. It turns out that the monitors can be fooled by other chemicals that also contain sulphur.

Alberta Environment acknowledges this fact, but it says it's equally concerned about these other chemicals as well, since they also have unpleasant smells. The Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, which runs the air monitoring stations, says it had special equipment installed at one of the stations last October to help sort out how much hydrogen sulphide there is compared to other sulphur compounds. However, Montpellier, from Alberta Environment, says the majority of the odour issues related to sulphur compounds are Suncor's, based on wind direction and other meteorological conditions.

Q: How does tailings pond cleanup fit into all of this?

A: Both Suncor and Alberta Environment think these emissions, whatever their exact composition, are coming from a tailings pond that is being reclaimed. A tailings pond contains a mixture of water, fine tailings, heavy metals and other chemicals. Gas bubbles in this mixture are trapped by the pressure of the water on top. But once you start to remove the water cap, the pressure is released and the gas bubbles up into the air." And the kicker is that as you reduce the cap, wind starts to have a huge effect on turbulent mixing," says Preston McEachern, head of science, research and innovation for Alberta Environment. "It's like when you step into a wetland, all these bubbles come up because you disturbed the bottom."
Suncor says reclamation on one of its ponds began in earnest in 2007. The water cap was completely removed as of last November.

McEachern says removing the water cap is one step that has to happen to turn the pond back into a surface that can be replanted with vegetation. At the end of the day the government has to balance its concerns, he says. They want to get rid of the old tailings ponds, but they want to do it on days or periods when the possible implications of gas release will be low, he says.

SD commission approves Keystone XL oil pipeline

jessie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:13:51 -0800

SD commission approves Keystone XL oil pipeline

Associated Press, Pierre, South Dakota, Feb. 18, 2010— A state commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve a construction permit for the crude oil pipeline TransCanada Keystone wants to build across western South Dakota.

After setting conditions requiring the company to protect the environment and reimburse landowners for any damage caused by the project, the three-member Public Utilities Commission approved the portion of the Keystone XL pipeline that would run about 313 miles through South Dakota.

In public hearings in November, landowners along the route said they were worried about oil spills and damage to their land, water and roads. PUC Chairman Dusty Johnson said the commission, its staff and representatives of landowners have done much to add language to the permit to protect landowners.

Spills from oil pipelines are rare, and the average spill across the nation in recent years has been about three barrels, Johnson said. Emergency response crews can respond to spills and other problems quickly, he said.

"When you put that all together, you realize that this project can be done in a way that is sensitive to the needs of South Dakota, her land and her people," Johnson said.

Paul Seamans of Dakota Rural Action, a nonprofit group that has helped landowners, said he would prefer the project not be built, but he praised the PUC for its work on the construction permit. Landowners are mostly worried about environmental issues that will be handled in pending federal permits, he said.

The proposed pipeline would deliver up to 900,000 barrels of crude oil each day from tar sands near Hardisty, Alberta, to Gulf Coast terminals and refineries in Texas. It would enter South Dakota from Montana in Harding County and run through Butte, Perkins, Meade, Pennington, Haakon, Jones, Lyman and Tripp counties before entering Nebraska.

The South Dakota portion is estimated to cost $920 million, and the company wants to being construction in 2011.

TransCanada is already building another pipeline through eastern South Dakota to deliver Canadian crude oil to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma.

Some opponents have criticized the PUC for approving the construction permit before a federal environmental study is completed, but commissioners said a state law set a deadline that required them to make their decision now. TransCanada Keystone XL needs a presidential permit from the U.S. State Department, and the state permit approved Thursday requires the company to comply with all requirements of the State Department's environmental impact statement.

The permit conditions approved by the PUC cover 13 pages. They include requirements for a public liaison officer to deal with landowner complaints, the repair of any damage caused to property by construction or operation of the pipeline, and the protection of water supplies.

Commissioner Steve Kolbeck also succeeded in adding a provision that would require a paleontologist to be on site during construction if a landowner requests it in a portion of the route where dinosaur fossils are commonly found. Landowners need protection against the loss of fossils of dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex, which can be very valuable, he said.

Husky, BP fuel oil sands resurgence

jessie — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:34:43 -0800

Husky, BP fuel oil sands resurgence

Brenda Bouw & Iain Marlow, Globe and Mail, Jan. 20, 2010--The energy industry slapped down its second multibillion-dollar bet this week on the oil sands, a strong endorsement for a key sector of the Canadian economy in which development almost stopped during the recession.

Husky Energy Inc. and partner BP PLC said they will spend $2.5-billion on the Sunrise oil sands project, the first phase of which would produce 60,000 barrels of bitumen a day. The companies cited sharply lower costs to build in the oil sands as a principal reason for the move. The price is almost 40-per-cent less than an earlier estimate of $4-billion, Husky said, crediting better design for the project.

Sunrise, announced late Wednesday, follows a 83,000-barrel-a-day expansion of the existing Surmont facility by ConocoPhillips Co. and Total SA revealed on Tuesday, estimated at $1.5-billion.

The two projects join a small group of others under way, showing a resurgence in oil sands projects. Still, some companies are taking a measured approach in contrast with the boom of a few years ago when construction was rampant as more than 20,000 workers were employed at various sites in Alberta's Fort McMurray region. Prices to build inflated during the boom, from steel to construction workers, and costs rose so high that few projects could be profitable with oil prices below $100 (U.S.) a barrel over the long term.

Now, with development costs down as much as 40 per cent, lower oil prices allow projects to produce sustainable profits.

“There's a general sense among the operators that the timing is looking favourable to get these projects back into construction phase,” said Chris Feltin, an analyst with Macquarie Securities in Calgary. “It's a combination of being able to get access to labour and lock in lower material prices,” he said.

First production from Sunrise is set for 2014, and total production could reach 200,000 barrels by 2020. The facility will use technology that injects hot steam into wells to warm the viscous bitumen below ground and coax it to the surface.

Husky has a similar project called Tucker Lake, but results there have been a major disappointment. The $500-million project opened in October, 2006, and was supposed to be at 30,000 barrels of bitumen a day by late 2008. The wells encountered drilling problems and missed the heart of the reservoir. Subsequent work to resurrect Tucker Lake hasn't worked either. Production at the end of September was 4,300 barrels a day, about 15 per cent of the goal.

Sunrise is “very significant” for the future of Husky, one of the Calgary company's largest growth projects, according to Husky spokesman Graham White.

Husky formed a 50-50 partnership with BP of London in 2008. BP took a 50-per-cent stake in output from Sunrise and Husky and BP joined forces on refining the production in the United States at a facility in Ohio, where $2.5-billon is to be spent to improve the refinery to handle difficult-to-refine oil sands crude.

The deal is similar to one that Cenovus Energy Inc. has with ConocoPhillips.

Husky did not outline any new environmental technology to use less water or contain greenhouse gas emissions, issues that have garnered the oil sands a negative reputation around the world for its “dirty oil.”

ConocoPhillips and Total aren't using breakthrough technology either but did say they would use less water, energy and land for the expansion of Surmont compared with the first phase.

Husky, traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, is controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

U.S. oil spill raises concerns about Northern Gateway project from Alta. to B.C.

jessie — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:30:35 -0800

U.S. oil spill raises concerns about Northern Gateway project from Alta. to B.C.

George T. Baker, Prince Rupert Daily News, January 19, 2010--An oil spill at an Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB) pipeline in North Dakota has raised questions over the reliability of the company's Northern Gateway project in B.C.

Prince Rupert, B.C. environmentalist Jennifer Rice said the spill of an estimated 477,000 litres of crude oil is adding to opposition of the proposed project between Alberta and the West Coast.

"Enbridge simply cannot prevent oil spills from its pipelines," said Rice, of the Friends of Wild Salmon. "And in our watersheds, even one oil spill of this magnitude is unacceptable."

The Northern Gateway pipeline would carry oil from the Alberta tar sands to a supertanker port at Kitimat, B.C., crossing several wild salmon watersheds.

Last week's leak was located in Pembina County, North Dakota.

"Had the spill occurred here in northern B.C. along Enbridge's proposed pipeline, the effects could have been catastrophic to the Skeena's wild salmon economy, estimated to be worth over $100 million per year," Rice said.

Northern Gateway spokesman Steve Greenaway said the company can't prevent every leak but tries its best. "We think we have a good track record and technology has allowed us to be a very safe operator of the movement of oil."
Greenaway said Enbridge has 50 or 60 leaks a year - the average for the past two or three years. "The majority of those are contained within our facilities and those incidents would happen at a facility like a pumping station where we might have leaks as small as (eight litres)," Greenaway said.

The U.S. pipeline is part of the massive system that transports most western Canadian oil to the American Midwest, Oklahoma and southern Ontario. The line that was damaged extends to Superior, Wis., from Manitoba. Canada is the top exporter of oil to the U.S., exporting more than 1.9 million barrels per day

Oil Sands Cleanup Efforts Criticized

jessie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:52:35 -0800

Oil Sands Cleanup Efforts Criticized

John Lorinc, December 3, 2009--With Canada facing mounting international pressure to confront its sluggish emission-reduction record heading into the Copenhagen climate meetings next week, environmental groups this week released yet another unflattering appraisal — this one showing that seven of Alberta’s nine oil sands projects will fail to meet new cleanup rules for the vast tailing ponds near bitumen refineries.

Absent compliance, the Pembina Institute and the Water Matters Society of Alberta estimate that by 2020, Alberta’s tailing ponds could contain about 300 million gallons of toxic liquid and cover almost 100 square miles — an area the size of Brooklyn. Those figures represent a 30 percent increase over current volumes.

After assessing available corporate and government data, the group concluded that most oil sands projects are years away from complying with a February 2009 directive requiring producers to capture 50 percent of fine particles by mid-2013.

The tailing ponds made headlines in the spring of 2008, when hundreds of ducks died after landing in these contaminated man-made lakes.

Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board announced the new cleanup rules after the controversy. Simon Dyer, a Pembina oil sands analyst, said in a release that it was “troubling” that most producers did not appear to be moving toward compliance.

Oil company executives say the delays have to do with the slow development of technologies capable of sifting the suspended materials out of the ponds, according to The Globe and Mail, which also quoted an official from the Energy Resources Conservation Board as saying that new applications would not be granted without approved cleanup plans.

Mr. Dyer, however, told Green Inc. that it had been very difficult to determine whether the government was actually enforcing its own rules.
“There is a real lack of information,” he said.

That conclusion dovetails with a hard-hitting investment risk assessment on the oil sands released late last month by Northwest and Ethical Investments, which is part of the Ethical Funds Company in Vancouver.
The fund managers said that only Shell had established clear emission reduction targets, while most other producers failed to disclose mitigation strategies or plans to address water and land-use issues.

The report stated:

Despite the obvious liability presented by mining tailings ponds, there is little clarity about financial provision for their reclamation. Not all operators include tailings ponds within their asset retirement obligation (A.R.O.) reporting, and none were willing to disclose the reclamation cost estimates that underlie the tailings pond portion of their A.R.O. calculations.

Only two oil sands operations set to meet rules to deal with liquid tailings

jessie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:27:53 -0800

Only two oil sands operations set to meet rules to deal with liquid tailings

Simon Dyer and Joe Obad, December 1, 2009, Calgary, -- A comprehensive review of regulatory documents filed with the Alberta government suggests most oil sands mining operations will not comply with a new provincial law designed to limit increases in tailings, the toxic liquid waste produced by oil sands mining operations.

"Two mines have proposed plans to start cleaning up the legacy of toxic tailings on the landscape," said Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute. "It is troubling that other companies are not willing to make the same effort and have submitted plans that appear not to meet the directive rules."

The review conducted by the Pembina Institute and Water Matters found that only two oil sands operations reported they would meet the rules to reduce toxic tailings between 2011 and 2013 (the start date for binding rules to capture and start solidifying liquid tailings). The seven remaining operations submitted plans that will not comply with rules for reducing their production of liquid tailings by the first target date in 2011. Some companies submitted plans suggesting they may not meet the rules for tailings management for over 40 years.

Oil sands companies were required to submit tailings management plans by September 30, 2009, in accordance with the newly released Alberta Energy and Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) Directive 074: Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes. The ERCB released the directive because of concerns that oil sands companies were not adequately addressing the clean up of tailings waste.

"It is essential that the ERCB rigorously enforce Directive 074 to achieve the kind of environmental performance expected by Albertans, and promised by the ERCB," said Dyer.

As a result of the non-compliant plans submitted by oil sands companies, the cumulative amount of liquid tailings being stored on the landscape north of Fort McMurray is set to increase by about 30 per cent between 2010 and 2020. It will reach a staggering 1.1 billion cubic metres of liquid tailings over the decade. During the same period, the area of the structures containing these liquid tailings are projected to nearly double to 250 square kilometres from the current area of 130 square kilometres.

"We are confident that the ERCB will reject those plans that are not compliant with the requirements of the directive and will use the full range of enforcement tools to ensure this important step in tailings management is upheld," says Joe Obad of Water Matters. "Enforcement tools available to the ERCB include halting oil sands expansions and suspending operations at oil sands mines until compliance is achieved."

Suncor pitches new approach

jessie — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:55:33 -0700

Suncor pitches new approach

Dave Cooper, October 24, 2009, Edmonton Journal--In a move that sets a new standard for the oilsands industry, Suncor Energy on Friday unveiled a novel way to speed the reclamation of tailings ponds.

The technique suggests a future with fewer ponds, and reclamation beginning in as few as seven years compared with the 40 years it now takes.

“Suncor’s proposal raises the bar for all companies operating in the oilsands,” said Simon Dyer, oilsands program director with the Pembina Institute, an environmental group.

“No other company is planning this,” he said, adding that other oilsands companies should now be expected to match Suncor’s system, if it works as promised.

Suncor applied to the Energy Resources Conservation Board to be allowed to use the patented technology, which has been under study since 2003.

The process is part of the submission Suncor made this month to the ERCB.

The board is reviewing proposals from all six oilsands companies on how they will meet tougher new standards for tailings pond reclamations.

Suncor’s new approach allows mature fine tailings, which take years to settle out, to be pumped from the ponds.

A polymer clumping agent is added, and the thick, soupy material — which is about 40 per cent clay and 60 per cent water — is then deposited in thin layers over sand beaches with shallow slopes in a contained area, much like a landfill site.

Thanks to the polymer, the water quickly separates from the claylike tailings and flows to collection pipes, which return it to the bitumen processing plant.

In just a month, the tailings are dry enough to be walked on.

The site is then turned over and over with discing equipment, and when totally dry the material is removed and used for construction projects around the site.

Suncor expects to repeat the process — called tailings reduction operations — every year, and compares the operation to farming.

Syncrude pleads not guilty in dead ducks case

jessie — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:00:57 -0700

Syncrude pleads not guilty in dead ducks case

Sarah O’Donnell, September 14, 2009, Edmontonjournal.com, ST. ALBERT — Oilsands giant Syncrude pleaded not guilty Monday to charges levelled against it by the federal and provincial governments in connection with the deaths of about 1,600 ducks on its tailings pond north of Fort McMurray.

The not guilty pleas come seven months after the company was charged under both the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act after the flock of waterfowl landed on the waste pond in April 2008 and were covered in oily residue.

Syncrude lawyer Robert White said afterwards on the steps of the St. Albert courthouse that the company has expressed its “deep regret” for the tragedy many times and taken steps to make sure such an incident does not happen again.

“Syncrude is not above the law,” White said. “However, the law has recognized for a long time that when people do their best to avoid something, that isn’t a matter for charges. That is a matter of fixup.”

Charging the company will do nothing to bring back the 1,600 ducks, White said. “And it is not possible for anybody to do more than Syncrude has done to ensure it never happens again.”

Two months of court time, beginning March 1, 2010, are reserved for the trial in St. Albert because there was no courtroom time available in Fort McMurray for a lengthy trial.

Bob Cox, executive director of Greenpeace Canada, said he was disappointed, but not surprised, that the company opted to fight the charges.

In a written statement issued by Syncrude upon entering the pleas, president and CEO Tom Katinas reiterated the company’s apology for the loss of wildlife, calling it “completely unacceptable.”

Katinas said he would not outline the company’s reason to plead not guilty out of respect for the judicial process. “We will provide our reasons in court, and we ask Canadians for their patience as we go through this legal process,” he said in the statement.

White said the company is still considering whether to launch a constitutional challenge against the federal charge.