The oil sands have been Ground Zero for much
vilification of Canada’s continued development of our fossil fuel
resources. But as noted by href=”http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/feb11/carson.pdf”
target=”_blank”>Bruce Carson, executive
director of the Canada School of Energy and the Environment at the
University of Alberta (and former policy adviser to Prime Minister
Stephen Harper), all of Canada benefits from the oil sands and this
will continue to be the case for many years to
come.

Notes Carson, the oil sands
account for 55 percent of Canada’s crude oil production, and alone
have generated over $70 billion for the Canadian economy (2007),
twice that of the auto industry. With current oil sands reserves of
170 billion barrels and another 145 billion barrels that could be
developed in the future, it is clear fossil fuels will continue to
be a major component of our economic
future.

But he adds, notwithstanding the importance of the
oil sands as an economic driver for Canada, “The challenge is to
strike a balance between energy and the environment: wildlife
preservation, land and water use, and GHG emissions
reduction.”

The energy sector is a major economic
driver for Canada. The oil sands alone currently contribute 112,000
jobs across Canada, and over the next 25 years are expected to
contribute over 11 million person years of employment to Canada and
$1.7 trillion to the Canadian economy - spread across the
country 

Carson, as with the other contributors to this series of
articles notes that the environmental impacts of oil sands
development are obvious in everything from water use, air
pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, etc., and cannot be minimized,
although they are  not as severe as has often been
portrayed by some environmentalists.

target=”_blank”>Todd Hirsch, a Calgary-based
economist for ATB Financial echoes this point in his article about
separating fact from fiction when it comes to the oil snads. He
notes that even when taken as a
group of projects in their entirety, all of the oil sands mines in
Alberta do not emit as much carbon as the coal-fuelled electrical
facilities in at least half a dozen US states. Overall,
the coal-fired US energy industry is responsible for 64 times
as much GHG emissions as the Canadian oil sands, he
writes.

That fact does not excuse any of
the environmental issues surrounding
the oil sands, but it does
highlight the need for balanced monitoring and reporting of the
facts, a point made clear in the December 2010 report of the Royal
Society of Canada Expert Panel that blasted both the Alberta and
federal governments for not providing sufficient monitoring and
regulatory capacity to ensure the oil sands are being developed in
a sustainable manner. 

That point about monitoring was further
hammered home by the report of an expert panel appointed by former
federal environment minister Jim Prentice in response to
revelations by University of Alberta professor Dr. David Schindler
that water quality in the Athabasca River was being seriously
degraded by the cumulative impacts of oil sands
development. 

Both the Alberta and federal governments have put
into motion steps to improve environmental oversight in order to
build decent and credible monitoring and reporting systems, not
just for water use and possible contamination, but for all oil
sands activities. Furthermore, both governments have committed to
make monitoring data publicly accessible.

No one understands better the need to improve the
environmental track record of oil sands activities than the key
players in the oil patch. For the past year, the Canadian
Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) has engaged in a costly
public relations effort to promote the image of responsible
environmental stewardship by its member
companies. 

But as noted in an earlier GLOBE-Net article, as the anti-oil
sands rhetoric increased, many people (particularly outside
Alberta) dismissed oil industry reports (and the associated
advertisements) of technological breakthroughs that would lessen
the environmental impacts of oil sands development or which would
speed up tailings pond reclamation, as nothing more than
industry hype. (See GLOBE-net article
style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal;”>”style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal;”>href=”/articles/2010/september/1/oil-and-water-don’t-mix-but-can-they-co-exist-a-globe-net-editorial.aspx?sub=”
target=”_blank”>Oil and Water Don’t Mix - But Can They
Co-Exist. A GLOBE-Net
Editorial” 
 

But in fact real progress is being made on the
ground. In December Canadian Natural Resources, Imperial Oil, Shell
Canada, Suncor Energy, Syncrude Canada Ltd., Teck Resources and
Total E&P Canada announced they would collaborate
and share research and development efforts relating to oil sands
tailings management.

“The issue is not whether we can manage
tailings - the issue is whether we can do it better,” said John
Broadhurst, Vice President of Shell’s Oil Sands
Development.  “We
believe that this relationship is a key step towards tailings
solutions that will allow us to accelerate the pace of reclamation
using the most advanced environmental measures,” he said about
the industry pact.

Each company pledged to share existing
tailings research and technology and to remove barriers to future
collaboration on tailings R&D. 
These huge tailings ponds, which have drawn the ire of
environmentalists around the world, stand as the signature focal
point of condemnation of Canada’s environmental
performance.

Both Suncor and Syncrude Canada have made impressive
gains in their tailings management research efforts. In Syncrude’s
case accelerating the settling process of residual bitumen fines
through the use of centrifuge technology and water capping - i.e.
creating fresh water lakes atop tailings. Construction of a
commercial scale centrifuge demonstration project will get underway
next year, as will the first commissioned water capping
project.

Last
June Suncor Energy
received approval for its tailings management plan from the Energy
Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) which involves a new approach
to tailings management called TRO_{TM.
}The company expects to invest
more than $1 billion to implement
this
technology over the next two years, potentially
reducing tailings reclamation time by decades and speeding up the
return of oil sands mining sites to natural
habitats.

In
September
Suncor 
became the first oil sands company to complete
surface reclamation of a tailings pond, a key step in returning the
site back to nature. 

But despite
these
gains, images
of dead ducks killed after inadvertently landing on toxic tailings
ponds proved a public relations nightmare and an expensive lesson
for oil sands companies, all of which
have stepped up their bird and wildlife management
efforts and are taking precautions to avoid repeat incidents.

”There
is no doubt all of us have to improve our game in terms of
environmental performance”, said Mark Kruger, a public affairs
advisor for Syncrude Canada in an interview with
GLOBE-Net.

“This does not mean we haven’t made significant
progress,” he notes, “but we have to continue to develop and
improve our technologies to reduce or eliminate any adverse
environmental impacts.”

Other gains have been made in lowering the volumes
of water used in the oil sands extraction process, researching the
provision of wildlife corridors, lowering air pollution, and
increasing the use of recycled water. Syncrude is building the
industry’s first reclaimed fen wetland and is partnering with four
universities on a $3.8 million project to understand how to reclaim
wetlands better and more quickly.

Significant gains have also been made to lower the
intensity of greenhouse case emissions per barrel of oil produced.
In Syncrude’s case reductions of greenhouse gas emissions per
barrel by 14 per cent were achieved through new technologies that
lowered energy use in the extraction process. Other oil sands
players have reported similar gains.

It would be an understatement to
say that, along with the economic discussion, a great deal of
attention is being paid to the oil sands development’s
environmental impact.  The emission of pollutants and GHGs,
tailings ponds, biodiversity, water quality and use, land
disturbance and the boreal forest - virtually everything about oil
sands development has an environmental dimension. These issues
range from the local and regional to the international. Bruce
Carson, executive director  Canada School of Energy and the
Environment

But the issue facing policy makers and
industry players alike is not simply reducing the environmental
costs of oil sands exploitation, it is about moving beyond the
political gridlock of environmental rules versus economic benefits,
or the one dimensional debate of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
to see how emerging global energy and climate change policies will
affect Canada’s competitiveness over the next 10 to 40 years
notes  href=”http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/feb11/mccoll.pdf”
target=”_blank”>Velma McColl, principal of
the Earnscliffe Strategy Group in Ottawa.

“The Canadian debate on energy
and climate has become myopic, placing undue attention on the oil
sands as the only litmus test for progress,” she
notes.  The oil sands will be developed, she
adds, and industry understands this acutely and is responding to
improve their environmental performance and resource efficiency,
not only to compete but also to regain public
confidence. 

There is a bigger game afoot, notes McColl,
one that involves making the investments necessary for Canada to
compete in the low-carbon future against countries like China, the
United States, Britain and Korea that are outspending us multiple
times over to develop green technologies that we may someday end up
buying. 

The abundance of our energy resources will not
guarantee our future competitiveness according to McColl and other
writers in this series.   But the prudent
management of this wealth poses an opportunity to strengthen our
manufacturing capabilities and to develop and deploy the clean
technologies that not only will benefit us at home, but also will
position us to better compete in world markets that will be forever
changed by climate-related disruptions in agriculture, accelerated
deforestation, higher food prices and dwindling access to clean
water.

From the vantage of the business community,
target=”_blank”>Linda Hasenfratz and Hal
Kvisle, respectively CEO of Linamar Corporation
and former CEO of the TransCanada Corporation, also make the case
that Canada “needs a focused national strategy” so that it can
“achieve its potential as an energy and environmental
powerhouse.”

“Governments at all levels must
provide clear and consistent signals to the private sector so
industry can get on with the job of developing advanced energy
systems, cleaner technologies and high-quality jobs,” they
note.

Such a national energy strategy is sorely lacking,
notes href=”http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/feb11/emerson.pdf”>David
Emerson, former industry and trade minister and
chair of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada. Notes Emerson,
while Canada has an abundance of energy resources, he states, what
we lack most is an energy strategy that is also environmentally
sustainable. 

As noted by Policy Options Editor  L. Ian
MacDonald, taken together, these articles reflect a shifting debate
in this country, led largely by a diverse set of voices outside
government. 

As has been noted often in GLOBE-Net, it is this type of
informed dialogue that will lead to a better understanding of both
the imperatives of environmental protection and the importance of
sustainable economic growth. In the case of the oil sands, the
issues are simply too important to be sidelined by breakdowns in
communications.