Environment Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

But the current regulations—and I'm actually looking at the federal regulations as well, because our panel is federal.... I know how the regulatory system works and I know it could also be opened up, if we find that we need to improve the standards.

I'd actually like to ask this question of Dr. Guigard, because in your presentation you had suggested there were a number of serious problems with the tar sands and issues that we needed to address. You'd mentioned that in the lab you seem to be moving forward with some solutions. But these are not moving into the field. This is what I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to understand why.

First of all, could you tell me if you think there are some advances where we could in fact be using substantially less water, or where we could having a mechanism for developing the tar sands with less impact on the land and so forth?

Are the things you're developing in the lab actually moving out to the field in the new developments? If they're not, why are they not?

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

There are some developments that are happening in the lab, looking at waterless extraction technologies, for example. You might have seen some of the work that I've been doing in looking at a waterless extraction process. We've been working on that in the lab. And I've seen some others publicized a little bit in the newspapers, and less so in the peer-reviewed journals, because I think there are a lot of issues regarding patents and what not. But there are technologies out there. Which technology is the best? We still don't have the answers.

If I can speak a little bit from personal experience, one of the challenges we've been facing with this research—and which I've also seen from other people who have been doing similar work—is that going from the lab to a pilot scale project to prove its economic potential and environmental gains is a very expensive process. We're talking several millions of dollars, and it's very high risk. So balancing the cost of that with the high risk is a difficult sell for a researcher and potentially for some of the people proposing some new innovative technologies.

Then, as I mentioned in my presentation, there's the issue that if we have such large infrastructure in place, how can we move ahead with these new technologies and leave that infrastructure in behind? I think those have been two of the challenges that I have faced, basically the risk and the associated costs of moving it into a provable—

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Dr. Guigard, are you seeing any movement in this? I appreciate your testimony, which is actually very informative, but we have a lot of applications in the hopper. We have a lot of proposals, and once they get the funding the investments are going to be moving forward again. So it sounds like we're putting lots of federal money into the R and D, but it's not going anywhere, because nobody wants to spend the money, or it's too risky, and so forth.

How much of the R and D being done across Canada is actually being deployed and incorporated into permitting and development?

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

I would say that's a difficult question to answer, because when we do research and development, it's just that, research and development, and all of those things that are tested in the lab and work in the lab might not work when we go up to pilot scale. For example, there are technologies that really work well in the lab, but to scale them up poses a whole host of new challenges.

So I don't think we're investing dollars that aren't going to bear fruit. Eventually, there might be some other innovation that comes out of that, but there are some technologies.... I guess we feel, my collaborators and I on this project, that there seems to be a chasm that makes going from that basic small pilot scale to the large pilot scale a very difficult leap. We found there has been a little bit of movement with private and venture capitalists, if you will, or angel investors. Those seem to be the people who are willing to take a little bit more of a risk.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Who decides what moneys will be spent on an innovation centre? Is it simply the scientists? Is it the people who provide the funding? Are there first nations involved? I'm curious to know who sets the priorities for the innovation centre.

[Dr. Murray R. Gray]

For our innovation centre, the priorities are set by the people who are providing the funding, along with the University of Alberta. So we have an executive committee that consists of representatives from industry, the Government of Alberta, and from the University of Alberta, the major partners in the centre, and they decide on the scientific direction.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

I'm going to have to go to Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here. You were both highly recommended, so it's good to hear your testimony this morning.

The focus has been on the open pit mining as opposed to the in situ. Is that where your expertise is? Should I be asking questions about the open pit and not in situ?

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

I know a little bit about in situ, but not as much as some of my work, which is on surface mining.

[Dr. Murray R. Gray]

You can try us.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

The main focus of this committee was to focus on water. As we've already seen this morning, the questions have been quite broad, talking about energy impacts with Mr. Trudeau, and so on. Yesterday we heard about treaty issues. We're finding that our discussion is evolving quite quickly.

When I was here two years ago, I took a trip on the Athabasca, by river. I was not able to fly over, as we did yesterday, so I've had both perspectives, and also did the tourist information centre. I'm finding this quite edifying, so I appreciate your input.

Two years ago I saw that the hydrocarbons were naturally leaching right into the Athabasca, as you've said. Dr. Gray, you said that organisms in the Fort McMurray oil sands area deal uniquely with the oil. As human beings, do we deal with these hydrocarbons in a unique way? Or are they unique organisms? In other words, are human beings being affected in a constant that would be harmful to be drinking water in the area from the Athabasca that has a hydrocarbon content that is higher than the norm? Do we react and get sick or have diseases or cancers because we're drinking water that has maybe been contaminated naturally?

[Dr. Murray R. Gray]

I'm a professor of chemical engineering, so I have to beg ignorance on the detailed medical aspects. I know I've tasted the water. As I mentioned to Monsieur Ouellet, the key is in concentration. The big issue for anyone who's interested in the effect on drinking water is what is the concentration of these compounds in the water? That's key to how it affects any organism, whether it's a micro-organism that loves to eat the oil, or whether it's fish or larger animals like humans, moose, and what not.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Some of these toxins are biocumulative, and in humans it may continue to build and build and build to a point where the amount that you've accumulated in your body now has a manifestation in the form of your becoming sick. It's a natural occurrence, because of drinking water with hydrocarbons in it.

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

This is actually a question for a toxicologist, I'd say, an environmental toxicologist.

[Dr. Murray R. Gray]

In terms of hydrocarbons, which I can answer your question on, hydrocarbons, in general, do not typically bioaccumulate in humans. That doesn't mean there's no health impact. Some of the light hydrocarbons that are present in gasoline, for example, can cause cancer in humans, but they don't tend to accumulate.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay. I'm going to switch gears--and thank you for that.

I want to talk about the tailings ponds that we saw. They talked about adding gypsum. Right now we have the water and the sand that's part of this water, that's pouring into this big reservoir, the tailing ponds. The sand, because it's heavy, drops down to the bottom, but you have this clay that stays suspended for years. We've heard and in reading that it could be 30 years, 40 years. So to speed that process up, they add gypsum into the water, and suddenly the clay's now dropped to the bottom and your water is cleaner. Therefore, it's possible to reclaim those tailing ponds in a very short period of time by adding the gypsum. Is this one of the new transformative technologies we found through research and development, that by adding gypsum, suddenly you could reclaim very quickly?

[Dr. Murray R. Gray]

The addition of gypsum, or calcium sulphate, has been quite well known for a long time. What's been more transformative is the techniques the companies have developed to mix it. They take the tailings, mix in gypsum and sand, and then they can put that mixture back into the mine. Basically, they can empty the sludge from the tailings pond and put it back into the mine.

The difficulty in this whole process is that once you add gypsum, the resulting water is awful for recycling into the plant to recover the bitumen. In the past, companies picked their water composition to get the most oil possible out of the oil sands. The downside was that it created the worst possible tailings problem. If you treat the water to get the best possible tailings behaviour, you get the worst possible bitumen recovery when you recycle that water. That's the challenge they're trying to juggle right now.

To me, this provides an opportunity to come up with new approaches. If you can change the water chemistry between the tailings pond and the plant, you may be able to get the bitumen and get rid of the tailings problem at the same time. That's one of the potential paths forward, using water. The other path forward is to use technologies that don't use water at all—you don't remove water from the Athabasca River and you don't create wet tailings in the first place. There's certainly a lot of merit in those approaches.

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

That's what they call the “CT”, or composite tailings, process. They've been investigating it for several years now. There are problems with the quality of the recycled water. There are very high levels of calcium—because they're adding gypsum—that have caused problems in the extraction process.

The processes of tailings and extraction, the water extraction process, are intimately integrated. The issue has been whether to emphasize the extraction, the bread and butter, or the tailings problem. There has been a real challenge in dealing with tailings, because you also want to make sure that you have good quality recycled water to lower the water demands on the Athabasca River. It's a difficult problem, and a challenge for the water extraction process.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

We saw the tailing ponds, and we saw a ditch around them. Around the base there was a system to ensure that there was no leaching of the tailing ponds into the Athabasca. The groundwater below it was being sucked up and pumped back into the tailing ponds. So it seemed to be designed quite well to ensure protection against leaching into the Athabasca.

Are you aware of any leaching from tailing ponds into the Athabasca?

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

What you saw were the seepage dikes and the channels around the tailings ponds to capture any of the seepage. These tailings ponds are not lined, so systems are in place to capture any seepage and return it to the tailings ponds. A study out of the University of Waterloo is looking at groundwater, with a view to ensuring that there's no seepage. What they're trying to use are these naphthenic acids, looking at their fingerprint in the tailings ponds and trying to learn whether there is seepage into adjacent water bodies, like the Athabasca River, or groundwater.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Is the study ongoing? Is there any indication of a leaching problem?

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

Right now the science and engineering, as far as I understand it, is looking at the analytical technologies to measure naphthenic acids. As the name implies, naphthenic acids are a group of acids. There's a lot of research going into developing analytical techniques that are sensitive enough to detect low concentrations of naphthenic acids, along with analytical techniques that can actually see the fingerprints of those naphthenic acids. This would allow us to say for sure whether there is seepage or not.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

But at this point, we don't know.

[Dr. Selma Guigard]

As far as I understand it, we don't have a clear understanding, from an analytical point of view, whether there is or not.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Warawa.

We have to freelance a bit, since we're travelling. And we have only a few minutes left in this particular segment. I would suggest, if the committee members are in agreement, that we allow four-minute questions to anyone who hasn't had a question. And I would like to ask one too. That will take us pretty much to 9:15. Is that okay?