Environment committee  I also have not had a chance to review the report, but I would like to comment on your perspective on the lack of data on aquifer reserves. Again, in the Cold Lake-Beaver River water management plan, and in fact in Imperial's 30-year history of production in the basin, we've dev

Environment committee  No, not at all. In fact, as part of each environmental impact assessment for any project, groundwater monitoring is necessary as part of the application process to understand where the aquifers are and what the potential impacts might be to the aquifer resources. My intent in my

Environment committee  Thank you, Ms. Duncan. Following up on Mr. Thompson's answer, there are two types of water in the mining industry surface water--the water that comes in contact with the oil sands and the water that doesn't. If the water does not come in contact with the oil sands, it is typical

Environment committee  Again, I would say it's not a yes-or-no answer. That's because it depends on the climate situation. Under the assumptions that were taken of a very dry period--I'm speculating somewhat--some 80% to 90% of that would be represented by that, say, 1%. There would be some additiona

Environment committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Ouellet. I wanted to clarify first the forecasting of the water take from the river. The Oil Sands Developers Group that did the forecast on water requirements specifically looked at a dry period, because it was a dry period when the water manage

Environment committee  Typically when we talk about groundwater sustainability, we talk about it either being sustainable or being mined. Technically that means that if you're withdrawing at a rate where if you stop withdrawing water, the levels recover in time—typically taking about the same length of

Environment committee  To date, yes.

Environment committee  That is a good question. One thing to recall about the in situ oil sands industry is that the resource is spread over quite a large geographical distance. We have operations up in the Peace River area, south of the Fort McMurray area, as well as in the Cold Lake-Beaver River basi

Environment committee  Yes. In fact, Alberta Environment right now is pulling together the individual monitoring networks that each of the in situ operators have and are required to have. Some of those are quite extensive. Imperial, for example, has over 600 groundwater monitoring wells just for its ow

Environment committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Trudeau. I can speak in particular detail to the Cold Lake-Beaver River basin, where Imperial operates its in situ operation. We use saline water in that operation. That's part of the Cold Lake-Beaver River water management plan, which has been

Environment committee  I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the perspective of water availability in the province of Alberta, and then I'll talk specifically about water use in the oil sands industry, both in surface mining and in the in situ industry. Each year in the province, appro