Alberta's Oil Sands in pictures

[Slava]

Originally Posted by habernac

They rather conveniently don't show the reclaimed land.

That is totally the case, and I am not eager to wade into this thread...but the reclaimed land is a bit of a joke as well.

Lets face it, whether its necessary or not, the land is virtually sterile when their done with it. The day they stop fertilizing the heck out of things is the day the grasses die and the buffalo have nothing to eat! Sure the ecosystem can be rebuilt (and they should not be admonished for trying), but its got to take an enormously long time to get it to work?

Anyway, I don't mean to take away from what I'm sure will be a vitriol and sweeping generalization filled thread with my kind of sit on the fence type of attitude here!

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by habernac

They rather conveniently don't show the reclaimed land.

Oil sands is relatively new, but in the next few years you'll see more and more reclamation sites.

And there are many regulations to be followed. A companies application to the ERCB must contain a reclamation plan. So before you even start, you must know how you're going to end. A directive was just issued regarding tailings. One of the main points states tailings deposition must be trafficable within 5 years. The list goes on and on. The next thing will be carbon capture and gasification of the upgrading coke. It is very easy to click a photo of the oil skim on a tailings pond and say "See!". It is also very frustrating to see it every day.

In a hundred years, a blip really, you won't even know we were there.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

In a hundred years, a blip really, you won't even know we were there.

I hope that this is the case, but how realistic is that?

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by Slava

I hope that this is the case, but how realistic is that?

Mine life of the Total mine is 40 years @ 100,000 bbls/day, but it's phased up to 250,000 bbls/day. CNRL, the same. Can't remember the Suncor, Syncrude, or Shell numbers. Don't know the Kearl or Fort Hills, but I'm sure they are all similar.

[MelBridgeman]

The human race is a walking ecological disaster....

[Boblobla]

Originally Posted by Slava

That is totally the case, and I am not eager to wade into this thread...but the reclaimed land is a bit of a joke as well.

Lets face it, whether its necessary or not, the land is virtually sterile when their done with it. The day they stop fertilizing the heck out of things is the day the grasses die and the buffalo have nothing to eat! Sure the ecosystem can be rebuilt (and they should not be admonished for trying), but its got to take an enormously long time to get it to work?

It really depends what processes we are talking about. If you are looking at SAGD there is a much much smaller physical effect on the landscape. For example, the project i am working on, there is an area that is as big as if not larger than our plan that is devoted to the storage and segregation of topsoil that is going to be put back to where the wellheads were when they have tapped that resource.

There is a larger carbon footprint from SAGD because of the immense amounts of energy it takes to heat all the water that is required to put steam down the wells.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by fotze

I think very realistic, once they decide to start to spend the money on it. The real risk is that when accounting for these projects or any development project the end of life costs are rarely considered when deciding if the project is economic. The costs are either removed (assumed the site will be sold off to someone) or put off so long that they are negligible to the economics.

The real risk is forcing the actual cleanup on a time frame, disallowing any of the operations to be sold to organizations that cannot foot the cleanup tab, and not allowing for a extended period of time where the company can merely "maintin the risk". In many cases it is more economic for the company to just monitor the spills and maintain the mess to the standards than it is to just spend the money to clean the whole thing up and push the huge capital cost off 50 years in the future.

I would argue this is old thinking. The plans now do consider the clean up costs and they are accounted for. Partially the reason for the rise in costs/barrel. The mines are planned now for progressive reclamation. The main tailings ponds are designed for a 10-15 year life. Once that is full, the pit is open far enough to start using it for tailings disposal. At that point the reclamation of the pond starts. There's still 25 years of mine life left, so it can't be ignored. That process continues as the "in pit" tailings sites are filled.

Environmental consciousness is part of the culture now. Not just filling out paper work to appease the regulators.

[BavarianHorde]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Those open pit mines are only 20% of the operations in Ft.Mac. Most of product is too deep to open mine. It sucks really, but mining isn't pretty. Google pictures of coal mining and you see places like Virginia where they literally remove the top of mountains to get at it. The land just looks like a scene from mars afterwards
However, there are some good success stories out there, as former mining sites are turned into golf courses and nature preserves.

That is crazy. I suppose that is my ignorance in how oil is extracted. My picture in my head is the Texan with the well, or the derricks in Alberta I have seen...

It would be great to see more pictures, especially aerial photos to see how the reclaimation programs.

In BC (especially in southern BC) there is a lot of environmental clashes because of clearcuts, but after the trees are replanted it is hard to tell that anything was there. It doesn't take long.

In this case, mining, you remove something from the ground, so it must look a lot different, and the processes must be something else too. Not to mention expensive.

No, they usually leave out the good stuff.

[Frequitude]

First off I should state that I a)work for Suncor, and b)know what we're doing is not good for the environment....

Things that bother me about the anti-oilsands rhetoric:
1) That tailings is "toxic sludge". It is not "toxic". What a poorly used word...purely for shock value. It is sand, water and a bit of bitumen that couldn't be extracted. That's not toxic. It's freaking sand, water and oil. They even say that in the subtitle to the tailings pipes photo..."Sand, water, and bitumen residues are finally piped to a tailings pond, where the water is extracted, cleaned, and reused in the mines."
2) People complain about the "scar on the land" that the oilsands has made. Ya, it is certainly a scar on the land. But that's exactly what a freakin mine does. The same mines that produce coal, which is the primary source of electricity generation - burning coal. No one has a problem turning on their lightswitch.


So again, it's not good for the environment. But it's not as bad as some people like to go on about.

[BavarianHorde]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

First off I should state that I a)work for Suncor, and b)know what we're doing is not good for the environment....

Things that bother me about the anti-oilsands rhetoric:
1) That tailings is "toxic sludge". It is not "toxic". What a poorly used word...purely for shock value. It is sand, water and a bit of bitumen that couldn't be extracted. That's not toxic. It's freaking sand, water and oil. They even say that in the subtitle to the tailings pipes photo..."Sand, water, and bitumen residues are finally piped to a tailings pond, where the water is extracted, cleaned, and reused in the mines."
2) People complain about the "scar on the land" that the oilsands has made. Ya, it is certainly a scar on the land. But that's exactly what a freakin mine does. The same mines that produce coal, which is the primary source of electricity generation - burning coal. No one has a problem turning on their lightswitch.


So again, it's not good for the environment. But it's not as bad as some people like to go on about.

No, that may very well be true. Like I said before, I haven't seen the oilsands before. I have heard them described, but never saw them.

There is always two sides to every story. There are issues where I live right now too where the same arguement is being made. I am just really curious because I have never seen the projects before, and I think it would be really good to see the after affects, after the sands are reclaimed.

It is beautiful country. I never realized that it was like that up there.

[photon]

Originally Posted by BavarianHorde

That is crazy. I suppose that is my ignorance in how oil is extracted. My picture in my head is the Texan with the well, or the derricks in Alberta I have seen...

The nice wells or derricks are conventional oil, stuff that's easier to get at.

Stuff like the oil sands are viable now because it's harder to find conventional oil. At some point in the future the majority of oil will be from stuff like the oil sands (how far varies wildly depending on who you talk to).

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Another source of information:

http://www.canadasoilsands.ca/en/overview/

It's a website sponsored by the oil sands companies, so one could argue the information is skewed oppositly of what a person would generally hear, but between the two lies the truth.

It's probably pretty obvious which industry I work for and, like Frequitude, I realize the industry is far from environmentally perfect, but there is a tremendous amount of work being done and money being spent to correct it.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Those open pit mines are only 20% of the operations in Ft.Mac. Most of product is too deep to open mine. It sucks really, but mining isn't pretty. Google pictures of coal mining and you see places like Virginia where they literally remove the top of mountains to get at it. The land just looks like a scene from mars afterwards
However, there are some good success stories out there, as former mining sites are turned into golf courses and nature preserves.

Just a little nitpick here, but is that true that 80% of the operations are underground, or is it that 80% of the reserves are in deep deposits, but most of these are not currently being heavily developed due to the cost restrictions? I had been under the impression that most of the activity would continue to focus on the shallow bitumen deposits, and hopefully by the time those are exausted, research would have come up with truly profitable (and environmentally friendlier) ways of extracting the deep deposits.

Here's the catch-22 from the environmental standpoint: the mining methods are really unsightly and have the potential for local environmental disaster, but on a global scale have little impact. Harvesting the deep deposits will result in vast amounts of greenhouse gases and on a global scale it will have much more impact, but they don't produce the ugly landscapes or dead animals or cancer outbreaks. The best thing to do from an environmental perspective is to continue to harvest the shallow deposits for as long as possible while furthering the technology for extracting bitumen from the deep deposits.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

First off I should state that I a)work for Suncor, and b)know what we're doing is not good for the environment....

Things that bother me about the anti-oilsands rhetoric:
1) That tailings is "toxic sludge". It is not "toxic". What a poorly used word...purely for shock value. It is sand, water and a bit of bitumen that couldn't be extracted. That's not toxic. It's freaking sand, water and oil. They even say that in the subtitle to the tailings pipes photo..."Sand, water, and bitumen residues are finally piped to a tailings pond, where the water is extracted, cleaned, and reused in the mines."
2) People complain about the "scar on the land" that the oilsands has made. Ya, it is certainly a scar on the land. But that's exactly what a freakin mine does. The same mines that produce coal, which is the primary source of electricity generation - burning coal. No one has a problem turning on their lightswitch.


So again, it's not good for the environment. But it's not as bad as some people like to go on about.

The oil and sludge has benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xyenes, naphthalene, aromatics, as well as some metals... many of which are known to cause numerous health problems - including cancer.

I work as an environmental consultant for oil companies and deal with this stuff directly all the time. I collect the samples, see the data, and write the reports. The stuff isn't benign by any stretch of the imagination.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by brownie

Yup I have.....on hot days in the summer you can see the tarsand oozing out of the riverbanks.

Blame Syncrude.

[Ronald Pagan]

Things that bother me about the anti-oilsands rhetoric:
1) That tailings is "toxic sludge". It is not "toxic". What a poorly used word...purely for shock value. It is sand, water and a bit of bitumen that couldn't be extracted. That's not toxic. It's freaking sand, water and oil. They even say that in the subtitle to the tailings pipes photo..."Sand, water, and bitumen residues are finally piped to a tailings pond, where the water is extracted, cleaned, and reused in the mines."
2) People complain about the "scar on the land" that the oilsands has made. Ya, it is certainly a scar on the land. But that's exactly what a freakin mine does. The same mines that produce coal, which is the primary source of electricity generation - burning coal. No one has a problem turning on their lightswitch.


So again, it's not good for the environment. But it's not as bad as some people like to go on about.

Clueless.

Oil sands tailings are toxic. Do an iota of reading on the topic.

WRT your second point, not all mines are giant open pit mines. The oil sands mines are some of the biggest by area in the world.

Many mines are shaft mines like in Sudbury etc.

[red sky]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Blame Canada.

Fixed

[Ronald Pagan]

Originally Posted by habernac

They rather conveniently don't show the reclaimed land.

Yup all 104 hectares of it.

That's ALL that has been reclaimed so far to the point to receive a reclamation certificate from the AB government.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Slava

That is totally the case, and I am not eager to wade into this thread...but the reclaimed land is a bit of a joke as well.

Lets face it, whether its necessary or not, the land is virtually sterile when their done with it. The day they stop fertilizing the heck out of things is the day the grasses die and the buffalo have nothing to eat! Sure the ecosystem can be rebuilt (and they should not be admonished for trying), but its got to take an enormously long time to get it to work?

Anyway, I don't mean to take away from what I'm sure will be a vitriol and sweeping generalization filled thread with my kind of sit on the fence type of attitude here!

Sorry Slava, but is this just speculation or you know for a fact?

For these reclamation sites, regulations insist they remove all topsoil and other organic rich soils and place them far far away. Then when there's land that needs to be reclaimed, they put that organic rich soil back on top. How the heck does that make something sterile?

[habernac]

Originally Posted by Ronald Pagan

Yup all 104 hectares of it.

That's ALL that has been reclaimed so far to the point to receive a reclamation certificate from the AB government.

It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a little time.