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Syncrude given more time to meet new tailing pond regulations
News Articles | Calgary Herald | Dan Healing | April 23, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
CALGARY – Syncrude Canada has been granted extra time to meet new tailings
pond cleanup standards in the first plan by an existing oilsands miner to be
accepted by the provincial regulator. The approval announced Friday morning
comes a day after Premier Ed Stelmach warned he will “get more aggressive”
to force companies to clean up their lakes of sand, clay and chemical
residue left after the sticky heavy oil is extracted. The Alberta Energy and
Resources Conservation Board issued a directive last winter requiring
companies provide plans to deal with their fluid fine tailings. Nine plans
were submitted last September. Three plans have been accepted – one for the
unsanctioned and oft-delayed Suncor Energy Fort Hills project and two at
Syncrude, where 500 million cubic metres of fine tailings in six ponds are
to be restored to a “trafficable surface” on timelines ranging from 2016 to
2037.
Syncrude, Canada’s second-oldest oilsands project and largest oilsands
miner, is currently in court facing charges related to the deaths of 1,600
ducks in 2008 in one of its tailings ponds. Although ERCB spokesmen have
said before that the directive targets are “firm, final and non-negotiable,”
chairman Dan McFadyen conceded in an interview Friday that the regulator is
being flexible as it reviews the plans. In Syncrude’s case, for instance,
fines capture at its Mildred Lake site must reach 9.3 per cent this year,
14.6 per cent next year and 34.6 per cent by 2013-14 – the directive
specified 20, 30 and 50 per cent over the three-year period. “That is some
of the flexibility that was granted to Syncrude,” explained Terry Abel,
executive manager of oilsands for the ERCB, noting that Syncrude asked for
more time to build “large and capital-intensive facilities” to create
consolidated tails and because of its competing needs for sand in an
existing reclamation project.
“It’s (because of) a combination of operational issues and the physical
requirements of building very large industrial facilities that we agreed the
timing is appropriate and reasonable,” said Abel. “While it gives them a
slightly different time step to get to that end point, the 50 per cent fines
capture, they still get to that same place.” Simon Dyer, oilsands program
director for the environmental Pembina Institute, said the news is
disappointing. “The ERCB needs to demonstrate that it is actually rejecting
inadequate plans and holding companies accountable,” he said. In a December
report card on the nine plans, Pembina found that only two, Suncor’s plans
for its existing operations and Fort Hills, met the directive. Richard
Houlihan, ERCB manager of minable oilsands, said Syncrude’s plan was
initially deficient on “strength criteria,” the stability of the trafficable
surfaces, but that has been remedied. McFadyen added that the oldest
oilsands company, Suncor, is in compliance with the directive. “Their
tailings reductions plans are becoming part of a much larger redesign of
their whole mine plan … It’s not that there’s a particular problem with
the Suncor one, it’s just very complex,” he said.
ERCB staff are also reviewing tailings plans submitted by Albian Sands
Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, Imperial Oil and Shell Canada. McFadyen
said there is no deadline to sign off on the plans but said the companies
are motivated to move the process along or risk not having enough time to
comply with the directive.
The ERCB noted that the next tailings pond slated to be returned to a
trafficable surface is Suncor’s Pond 1 by the end of this year. Only one
tailings pond, at Syncrude, has ever been reclaimed. The ERCB notes that
there are now 170 square kilometres of tailings ponds in the Fort McMurray
area, containing about 840 million cubic metres of liquid tailings.Syncrude
Canada Ltd, the country’s largest oil sands producer, will spend hundreds of
millions of dollars building two plants to reduce toxic waste under recently
tightened regulations, it said Friday.
The plants, which will employ new technology to process tailings from oil
sands production, are conditions of approvals by the Alberta Energy
Resources Conservation Board, the first under a directive issued in February
2009.
Syncrude and the ERCB said the new rules are tough, but at least one
environmental group said the approvals impose weaker targets than what were
spelled out in the directive.
The board approved tailings ponds — expansive man-made lakes that hold
water, leftover bitumen, clay and heavy metals from the oil sands production
process — for both Syncrude and the yet-to-be-built Fort Hills project. The
nods came with several conditions.
“This is the first time we’ve laid down specific criteria that the companies
had to meet with respect to managing their tailings ponds,” ERCB Chairman
Dan McFadyen said in an interview.
“They were performance criteria. It didn’t say how to do it. It said here’s
what you have to do to meet the management of tailings ponds to get them
toward what we call a trafficable surface so they can then be reclaimed.”
Under the new rules, operators must report on the ponds annually, cut the
accumulation of fluid tailings and specify dates for construction, use and
closure.
The ponds came to symbolize the battle between environmental groups and the
oil sands industry in 2008, when 1,600 ducks were killed when they landed on
a tailings pond at Syncrude’s operation in northern Alberta. Syncrude has
pleaded not guilty to federal and provincial charges over the incident and
the case is now being tried.
For its ERCB approvals, it will build one commercial scale tailings plant by
August 2012 at its Mildred Lake site, and another at its Aurora North mine,
the board said.
Syncrude must also meet annual targets for capturing tiny particles, called
fines, in the tailings.
The cost of the compliance, including building the plants, is in the
hundreds of millions of dollars, said Syncrude spokeswoman Cheryl Robb.
“They’re holding us to the plan that we submitted, which we considered an
aggressive plan,” Robb said.
Simon Dyer, oil sands director for the Pembina Institute, an environmental
think tank, said the approval conditions do not go far enough.
“Despite the tough talk about tailings, Alberta has accepted a plan from
Syncrude that doesn’t comply with its own rules to clean up tailings waste,”
Dyer said.
He said the targets for capturing fines, 9.3 percent next year, climbing to
34.6 percent by 2014, are lower than what the directive requires.
ERCB executive manager Terry Abel said the board insisted on tougher
measures than what Syncrude initially proposed.
For its approval, Fort Hills, a consortium that includes Suncor Energy Inc,
Teck Resources and UTS Energy, must apply to use new technologies six months
before testing them and have no fluid-like deposits of tailings left when it
closes the mine.
Last week, environmental groups launched a complaint against Canada under
the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying the country has failed to
enforce rules governing tailings ponds and their safety.
Critics charge that the ponds are being allowed to leak and contaminate
ground water, damaging the environment and endangering the health of local
residents.
Even the province’s government has said it wants to see the ponds eliminated
altogether.
The board said it is reviewing applications Albian Sands Energy Inc,
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, Imperial Oil Ltd, Royal Dutch Shell and
Suncor.
Tagged with: syncrude, ed stelmach, suncor, energy resource conservation board, mildred lake
