Alberta’s Oil Sands Projects Violating Cleanup Rules

Posted by Kristy Kershaw on December 4, 2009 at 3:01 pm

Tailing ponds in the oil sands have been lethal to ducks that have landed in them. (image: ghostsintheeyes.typepad.com)

Oh, Canada. It’s time to clean up your act. Not only is our neighbor to the north the target of “mounting international pressure” to beef up its emissions-reduction record before Copenhagen, but it has recently come to light that seven of Alberta’s nine oil sands projects are falling short of their new cleanup rules. According to a New York Times Green Inc. blog post Thursday, vast amounts of tailing ponds near bitumen refineries are housing some seriously toxic chemicals.

The numbers are grim. If Canada continues its noncompliance, the Pembina Institute and Water Matters Society of Alberta estimate that the tailing ponds could contain 300 million gallons of toxic liquid by 2020. A 30 percent increase over current volumes, that prediction amounts to toxic sludge covering 100 square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn!

After a 2008 controversy in which hundreds of ducks died after landing on the contaminated tailing ponds, Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board announced new rules for cleanup. Their directive required producers to “capture 50 percent of fine particles by mid-2013.” However, slow technology development is blamed for the delays in cleanup.

Canada’s tar sands have been the subject of much controversy over the years. While the amount of oil located therein is huge, getting to it is costly and, as evidenced here, pretty terrible for the environment. And if, as HeatingOil.com reported recently, the oil sands’ output is due to double within ten years, the cleanup issue is one they’ll really want to get in check.

Interestingly, in the comments of Green Inc.’s blog post, David Sands, an official allegedly hired by the Canadian government, states; “The tailings production problem in oil sands development must be addressed as per the ERCB directive. Compliance is not optional.” There is some further discussion in the comments after that, where Mr. Sands indicates that a “new, more restrictive directive” will be enforced soon in response to the violations.

With the oil sands comprising much of Canada’s oil supply, it is unlikely that the present situation will halt production in any way. So we can only hope that the Canadian government can find a way to regulate effectively, and that the necessary technology to clean up these tailing ponds is found soon. As our Gregg Gethard pointed out in his recent piece, doubling the output of Canada’s oil sands would lead to lower prices for heating oil and other energy consumers.