| In the first instalment of a three-part series on oilsands development in northern Alberta, Amy Steele looks at the scope of the projects underway and the environmental devastation being left in their wake.
In northern Alberta, there’s a growing lunar landscape, a rapidly expanding zone of nothingness, where oil and gas companies are ripping up huge quantities of boreal forest in order to feed the world’s voracious appetite for oil.
Driving north of Fort McMurray on Highway 63, the first indication of the rapidly growing oilsands development is a view of one of Suncor’s open-pit mines, a long barren gash in a hillside. Then the highway cuts right through the middle of Syncrude’s oilsands operation, and for as far as the eye can see, the boreal forest has disappeared. A vast industrial complex looms on the horizon, where the bitumen extracted from the oilsands is upgraded into crude oil. The upgrader complex is so huge that employees in coveralls standing in the middle of it look as small as ants. Plumes of steam rise above the site, but what you can’t see are the pollutants streaming out of smokestacks into the atmosphere. Trucks as big as two-storey houses drive around the open pits. These oilsands operations are so massive they make open-pit coal mines seem like a minor scar on the landscape.
The oilsands represent the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. Companies from around the globe, including Japan, France, China and the U.S., have flocked to invest. Yet this is only the start. There are currently three oilsands mining operations – Suncor, Syncrude and Albian Sands – but three more mines – Shell’s Jackpine, Canadian Natural Resources Limited’s Horizon and Petro-Canada’s Fort Hills – have already been approved and there’s a long list of other projects in the works. There are also the multiple in situ projects either in operation or proposed, where the oilsands reserves are too deep to be mined and so the bitumen is released by injecting steam into deposits. In situ projects have a smaller environmental footprint than oilsands mining projects, but environmentalists say they still lead to fragmentation of wildlife habitat.
Alberta oilsands projects currently produce more than one million barrels of oil per day and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasts that will increase to 2.7 million barrels per day by 2015. The Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) forecasts there will be $100 billion in oilsands investments between 2000 and 2020, and $123 billion in taxes and royalties going to federal, provincial and municipal governments. According to the Athabasca Regional Issues Working Group, oilsands projects will create 240,000 jobs across Canada by 2008. However, all these estimates, as well as other projected estimates in this story, were calculated before Canadian Natural Resources Limited announced plans last week to spend another $20 billion on its oilsands projects. If the plans go ahead, CNRL will replace Syncrude as the biggest oilsands player. EnCana Corp. has also just announced it will spend an additional $5 billion on oilsands development.
WRITING OFF THE BOREAL FOREST?
Alberta’s economic prosperity is expected to be intimately linked with the oilsands. However, as development ramps up at a frenzied pace, environmentalists are questioning what will be left of the boreal forest ecosystem after the oilsands bonanza ends.
Their fears escalated this month when the government released a new draft Mineable Oil Sands Strategy (MOSS), which states that economic development of the oilsands is the number one priority for a 2,586-square-kilometre area (an area slightly smaller than Kootenay and Yoho national parks combined) north of Fort McMurray. "The policy shifts from managing all resources in the mineable oilsands areas with equal weight to placing higher priority on extracting mineable oilsands," states MOSS.
"This is unprecedented not only in Alberta environmental history, but Canadian environmental history, to look at such a huge land mass and border it off essentially for unregulated growth," says Lindsay Telfer, director of the Sierra Club of Canada’s prairie chapter. "We’re looking at a huge and vast stretch of the boreal forest which is just going to be strip-mined. We need this document opened up for critical scrutiny. Let’s seriously take a look at what is being proposed here and actually look at what its long-term environmental implications will be."
Chris Severson-Baker, director of the Pembina Institute’s Energy Watch program, agrees. "This is just a straight reduction of environmental protection in that area," he says, adding that the strategy is proposing to "write off" that area.
Under the strategy, the government will now allow companies to mine in areas that include creeks, rivers and, in one case, a lake. In order to get at the bitumen, companies could be allowed to re-route the water out of the area – companies currently have to mine around the waterways.
MOSS openly states "all values associated with the element may be temporarily lost along with all contributions to the regional ecosystem. Reclamation efforts would focus on re-establishing the lost values."
Companies would not be allowed to re-route the Athabasca River, but they may be allowed to mine closer to it than they are now, and they could get permission to re-route its tributaries.
"Some of the tributaries may be re-routed," says Lisa Grotkowski, spokesperson for Alberta Environment. "We’re going to be consulting with the public on how are those tributaries being used, what is the value of the area, is there habitat that can or cannot be replaced."
The government has also stated that protection of wildlife habitat will no longer be a priority within the development zone and instead it will focus on protecting wildlife habitats and populations outside the zone.
Glenn Guenther, spokesperson for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, says there is woodland caribou habitat within the zone, but "it’s a very small percentage." Woodland caribou are listed provincially and federally as a threatened species.
"It will be an impact until it’s reclaimed. All it’s doing is removing some habitat for some species, but then we concentrate our efforts on other areas outside the mineable area so you maintain those populations," says Guenther.
However, the government is promising to maintain air and water quality standards in the area.
"Water quality, improving reclamation standards, air quality – those are absolute priorities. Air quality and water quality are always more important to us than mining," says Grotkowski.
She adds that rigorous air monitoring will still take place and the government will ensure regional, provincial and federal regulations are upheld. The government will also continue to monitor water quantity and quality from the Athabasca River.
The strategy calls on oilsands operators to co-ordinate reclamation efforts so they’re faster and more effective. Grotkowski stresses that MOSS is only a draft strategy and the public will have a chance to provide feedback.
Severson-Baker is skeptical about reclamation being successful.
"There will be very few areas that are not touched directly by a shovel and won’t be an artificially designed component of the landscape at the end of the day. All of the land will become part of the big reclamation experiment that’s going on up there right now," he says.
"The reason I call it a big reclamation experiment is because there’s been very little success at reclaiming the land up there to date and the areas that they have been focusing on tend to be the areas that should be easy to reclaim."
Grotkowski admits that no oilsands operator has received a certificate deeming reclamation complete, even though Suncor and Syncrude have been mining the oilsands for decades.
"To date we haven’t seen any of those certificates issued, so (MOSS) is a step to encourage industry to start working together, to start thinking ahead, to start planning together so that we’re reaching what we consider to be an ideal reclamation plan and that’s the boreal forest ecosystem," says Grotkowski. "We’re going to bring those lands that are there back to an equivalent use capacity to what the lands were before quickly and as efficiently as possible so we’re not passing the liabilities of the mining onto future generations."
Suncor and Syncrude have both started reclamation. Suncor says it has reclaimed about nine per cent of the land it has disturbed and has planted more than three million trees. Syncrude has reclaimed 3,000 hectares of land and planted more than 2.5 million trees. However, they haven’t fully reclaimed any open pit mines or tailings ponds.
Tailings ponds, which contain a slurry of sand, hydrocarbons, water and salts left over after the bitumen is extracted from the oilsands, are expected to be the toughest reclamation challenge. Tailings are left in ponds to settle and separate. Up to this point, none have been successfully reclaimed. During a tour of Suncor’s oilsands operation, Fast Forward was shown a tailings pond that dated back to 1967. The pond, the size of a lake, was covered in an oily sheen. Scarecrows, or what Suncor dubs "bitu-men," sit on water barrels, and water cannons go off at regular intervals to stop migratory birds from landing on the polluted water. Suncor is hoping to completely reclaim the pond by 2010.
According to the Pembina Institute, oilsands tailings ponds already cover 50 square kilometres of land. Environmentalists are concerned about pollutants from the tailings ponds migrating into groundwater or leaking into surrounding soil and surface water.
MYRIAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
Even if MOSS isn’t approved, there is still no shortage of environmental challenges facing the oilsands. Vast quantities of natural gas are needed in oilsands production and Alberta is running out of conventional supply, forcing the province to move towards more environmentally damaging production such as coal bed methane. In 2004, oilsands operations used 330 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and the National Energy Board predicts that consumption could increase to between 1.4 and 1.8 trillion cubic feet per year by 2015. Technological improvements have decreased greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity (emissions per barrel of bitumen) at oilsands operations. However, even with reductions in the amount of GHG emissions produced at individual oilsands plants, as more projects come onstream and existing projects expand, overall emissions will rise, making it extremely difficult for Canada to meet its obligations under Kyoto.
The Pembina Institute estimates that oilsands operations will release 66 megatonnes of GHGs by 2015 and 118 megataonnes of GHGs by 2030. Those figure are based on CAPP forecasts of oilsands production. In 2000, the oilsands industry emitted 23.3 megatonnes of GHGs so emissions could increase at a staggering rate if there are no major technological improvements at plants.
"The oilsands are the single most energy intensive and GHG intensive form of oil extraction in the world and we’re proposing to triple it or take it up to 10 million barrels a day at the same time that we’re saying we need to be reducing our GHG emissions as a country, so there’s a fundamental disconnect there that needs to be recognized," says Dan Woynillowicz, environmental policy analyst at the Pembina Institute.
The oilsands also require large amounts of water from the Athabasca River, which could have a detrimental effect on aquatic health of the river, at least in low flow periods. According to Alberta Energy statistics, two to three barrels of river water are needed to produce one barrel of bitumen. Pembina Institute statistics show that oilsands operations currently divert 349 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River – enough for a city of approximately two million – but that could increase to 665 million cubic metres with planned new development. Both Suncor and Syncrude have become much more water efficient in recent years, but as with GHG emissions, more water will inevitably be withdrawn. There’s also concern about pollutants created by oilsands development, such as napthenic acids, ending up in the river.
Mining the oilsands requires ripping up a huge amount of earth. To get to the oilsands deposit, mining companies have to first clear trees, then a layer of muskeg is removed. After that, heavy equipment tears up what’s called overburden (a mixture of sand, rock and clay) and then finally the oilsands deposit is exposed. Oilsands is a mixture of sand, bitumen, clay and water. Alberta Energy says in order to produce one barrel of oil, two tonnes of oilsands has to be ripped up. Alberta Environment estimates that the total amount of land disturbance in the oilsands could reach more than 1,767 square kilometres.
Air pollution will also be an increasing concern as more and more oilsands projects start emitting pollutants into the atmosphere. High levels of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog and acid rain, are produced in oilsands operations. New technology has led to dramatic reductions in sulphur dioxide emissions at Suncor, and Syncrude is introducing new technology to dramatically reduce its sulphur dioxide emissions. However sulphur dioxide emissions are projected to increase overall as more operations begin production. Meanwhile, nitrogen oxide emissions are rapidly increasing. The Pembina Institute estimates that if all planned and proposed oilsands projects are approved and the industry produces 3.7 million barrels of oil per day, nitrogen oxide levels will rise to 501 tonnes per day from the current level of 145 tonnes.
FAST AND FURIOUS
Ann Dort-MacLean, executive director of the Fort McMurray Environmental Association, says what it all comes down to is that the pace of oilsands development is too fast and not enough research has been done to determine thresholds over which there will be irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
"I don’t think we have a firm or good grasp of what the thresholds are, be it air, water, and yet we’re developing at a fast and furious pace," she says.
Dort-MacLean says the Cumulative Effects Management Association, which has multi-stakeholder representation, is trying to conduct research to determine what the cumulative effects of oilsands development are now and what they will be in the future, but it’s difficult for the association to keep up with the scale of development.
"The oilsands isn’t going anywhere, so is there a need to develop at the pace they are?" she asks. "I’d like to see some studies completed. I’d like to see some thresholds established. I’d like to know that we knew what we were doing before we do it, but the oilsands are fuelling the economy of the country and certainly the province, so sometimes those concerns get put ahead of some of the others, certainly the environment."
Woynillowicz says the obsessive pursuit of money from the oilsands is giving people tunnel vision.
"A gold-rush mentality is sweeping over Alberta, so you look at executives in the oil patch and provincial politicians and local politicians in Fort McMurray and their eyes kind of glaze over," he says. "They have this gold-rush fever that’s fixated on the economic opportunity that the oilsands present, and so they look at trying to produce the oilsands as quickly as possible with little thought about the environmental or social costs associated with going hell-bent toward producing as much oil as quickly as possible."
But Brenda Erskine, director of communications and community relations for Suncor, says it’s unlikely the pace of development is going to slow down.
"You’ve got the Chinese and the Americans knocking at Canada’s door saying, ‘sell us your oil,’ so it’s a huge opportunity for Canada in terms of the economy, in terms of long-term jobs and improving the economic stability of our country in general," says Erskine.
"We live in a market-driven economy. People want oil. I happen to believe Suncor can produce oil in a sustainable way." |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.