Oil sands tailings ponds (Canada)
Oil sand tailings contain a mixture of salts, suspended solids and other dissolvable chemical compounds such as acids, benzene, hydrocarbons[1] residual bitumen, fine silts and water.
[4] In his oft-cited 2008 journal article, E. W. Allen wrote that typically tailings ponds consist of c. 75% water, c. 25% sand, silt and clay, c.2% of residual bitumen, as well as dissolved salts, organics, and minerals.
[5]: 124 Although many of the components of TPW "occur naturally in adjacent landscapes, the mining process increases their concentrations",[4]: 3 for example, sodium, chloride, sulphate, bicarbonate, and ammonia.
A better understanding of the chemical makeup, including naphthenic acids, it may make it possible to monitor rivers for leachate and also to remove toxic components.
The identification of individual acids has for many years proved to be impossible but a breakthrough in 2011 in analysis began to reveal what is in the oil sands tailings ponds.
[2] According to a Calgary Herald article, by September 2017, the tailings ponds held c."1.2 trillion litres of contaminated water" and covered about 220 square kilometres (85 sq mi).
[15] The clean-up of tailings ponds, which "have sprawled to cover an area the size of Kelowna", which is 211.8 km2 (81.8 sq mi), represents a "significant part of the liability.
In response to the report, then Environment Minister of Alberta Shannon Phillips said that Wadsworth's estimates represented a “worst-case scenario” in which the industry shuts down overnight.
[20] At the time the MLSB inactive sump "was not covered by Syncrude's waterfowl protection plan to deter birds from landing at tailings areas".
[20] Doreen Cole, who has been Managing Director of Syncrude Canada since December 2017, "We immediately took steps to bring all these areas on our Mildred Lake and Aurora sites into our waterfowl protection plan.
"[20] On 22 October 2010 Syncrude was found guilty under the provincial and federal Acts and was fined $3-million, which at that time represented the "largest environmental penalty in Alberta history.
"[21] In 2008, 1,606 ducks died in Syncrude's tailings ponds, which at that time covered an area of 12-square-kilometres, because "cannons, effigies and other deterrents", intended for use to deter migratory birds, had not been deployed.
[10] The ERCB's 2013 "Tailings Management Framework for Mineable Oil Sands" "challenged a "key plank" of the Conservative provincial government, under Premier Alison Redford, who served from October 2011 until her resignation on 23 March 2014.
The ABCA found that Grant Thornton Limited "entitled to disclaim Redwater's non-producing oil wells and sell its producing ones".
[35]: 1 The "TMF under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan (LARP) provides direction to the AER and industry on the management of fluid tailings during and after mine operation.
[39] In late February 2018, CBC News and CP reported that Sequoia Resources Ltd, an oil firm that had purchased "licences for 2,300 wells" in 2016 from Perpetual Energy Inc., had notified AER that it was ceasing operations "imminently" and were unable to maintain "almost 200 facilities and nearly 700 pipeline segments".
[Notes 2] An article in The Globe and Mail said that this appears to be the "first attempt by a bankruptcy trustee in Alberta to have a previous oil and gas transaction unwound."
It could "introduce major new risks to the [oil and gas] industry’s ability to buy and sell assets and could also deliver a severe blow to Perpetual."
[43][Notes 3] On 1 November 2018 AER CEO Jim Ellis apologized for failing to report "that cleaning up after the province's oil and gas industry would cost $260 billion".
[45] In fact, across the entire oil sands region, only one square km of the total area disturbed by mining operations has ever been certified reclaimed.
In 2007 the area was a 220-hectare pond of toxic effluent but several years later there was firm land planted with black spruce and trembling aspen.
The 1.2 million cubic meters of topsoil over the surface, to a depth of 50 centimetres, was placed on top of the sand in the form of hummocks and swales.
[49][50][51] This often-cited example of reclamation is challenged by environmental groups,[52] who point out that the pond is not reclaimed, as the actual harmful tailings fluids were just moved somewhere else.
In 2008 Syncrude Canada Ltd. began construction of Sandhill Fen project, a 57-hectare research watershed- creating a mix of forest and wetland- on top of sand-capped composite tailings at its former 60-metre deep East Mine.
[53] The Pembina Institute suggested that the huge investments by many companies in Canadian oil sands was leading to increased production results in excess bitumen with no place to store it.
It added that by 2022 a month's output of waste-water could result in an 11-feet deep toxic reservoir the size of New York City's Central Park [840.01 acres (339.94 ha) (3.399 km²)].
The oil sands industry may build a series of up to thirty lakes by pumping water into old mine pits when they have finished excavation leaving toxic effluent at their bottoms and letting biological processes restore it to health.
[61][62] In January 2013, scientists from Queen's University published a report analyzing lake sediments in the Athabasca region over the past fifty years.
Levels of carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic PAHs were substantially higher than guidelines for lake sedimentation set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in 1999.
"[19]: 7361 The study collected data on emission rates of CH4 from the "five major facilities in the AOSR: Syncrude Mildred Lake (SML), Suncor Energy OSG (SUN), Canadian Natural Resources Limited Horizon (CNRL), Shell Albian Muskeg River and Jackpine (SAJ) and Syncrude Aurora (SAU)."
