That depends on the piece of equipment.
Evidence of meeting #21 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cema.
Evidence of meeting #21 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cema.
Manager, Strategy and Regional Integration, Suncor Energy Inc.
That depends on the piece of equipment.
Manager, Strategy and Regional Integration, Suncor Energy Inc.
It would probably be five to 20 years.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Do you mean that in 20 years, all the companies will be obliged to use this new technology to reduce water use or to treat tailings better? Can we expect that five years from now, all the facilities will be switching over to new and improved technologies?
Manager, Strategy and Regional Integration, Suncor Energy Inc.
No. When I said five to 20 years, I was actually speaking of capital equipment. Five years is probably the lifespan for a heavy-haul mine truck. Twenty years would be for a vessel, maybe a boiler, maybe a--
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
--but I'm talking about the use of water and the containment of tailings.
Manager, Strategy and Regional Integration, Suncor Energy Inc.
Do you want to try that one, Calvin?
Manager, Environment, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd
With tailings, of course, the technology evolves over time. As your process allows, you do improve as you go forward. Suncor is probably a good example to show this. Since the time of their inception there's been a very good step change going down; each time something comes along, they do apply it.
New projects such as ours employ the technology of the day. Carbon dioxide is available to us to do this because of the advances in technology, and that's going to help us with our tailings pond.
If new technology comes in and it's economically available, or if a process is available to bring it in--that's often a critical element, because the fundamentals of the process may or may not allow something--it comes into play.
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
There's that qualifier again, “if it's economically viable”.
Senior Vice-President, ConocoPhillips Canada
Can I add something from a SAGD perspective?
Senior Vice-President, ConocoPhillips Canada
In terms of the draft water directive that's been issued for increasing the regulations on water use in SAGD, all new facilities need to have it installed from the beginning. All existing facilities need to meet that standard within five years, because it does require adding capital equipment, and these things take time.
Senior Vice-President, ConocoPhillips Canada
That's not grandfathering. It's just getting adequate time for--
Senior Vice-President, ConocoPhillips Canada
New facilities will have to have it installed from the beginning. Existing facilities have to meet that standard within five years.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
I'm not sure if it was this panel or the one before that talked about tailings. That's one of the big issues raised by the report that I mentioned to the previous panel, the leakage of tailings. Would I be correct to say that you have independent, qualified scientists do the environmental impact assessments that you table before the tribunals?
Manager, Strategy and Regional Integration, Suncor Energy Inc.
That's correct.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
I have information that comes from the environmental impact assessments by the project proponents, which appear throughout to raise significant concerns about seepage.
For example, there's Shell Canada' Jackpine: “Jackpine seepage from the tailings ponds expected to be of poor quality. The natural shell of groundwater presents potential risks to groundwater.”
There's the Horizon oil sands project: “Closure water from the external tailings area will continue to leak into the groundwater system at a low rate.”
There's the Suncor project, the south tailings pond project, of 2003: “Seepage is the most significant pathway for the STP project to impact aquatic resources. Seepage will flow into Wood Creek sand channel.” Seepage from the STP, therefore, had the potential to change water quality in the lower portion of McLean Creek.
There seems to be list after list.
There's the Firebag project of Imperial Oil: “Firebag downstream of the confluence from the western most tributary could potentially be affected by seepage from the external tailings area.”
So I'm puzzled; if the EIAs produced by your own consultants are indicating that there's going to be a problem with seepage from tailings, it seems to contradict what we're hearing in the testimony from industry, that there is no risk of seepage from the tailings area.
Manager, Environment, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd
The environmental impact assessment, by definition, requires that companies present the most conservative case possible so that it can be properly evaluated as to, if all things go wrong, what it would look like.
In the case of the Horizon project that you referenced, we indicate in there that we will release seepage out at 530 metres cubed per day, I believe, or something like that. That's just off the top of my head. That was assuming that the tailings pond was sitting over top of permeable sand material. It assumed that any natural barrier effect that would come out from silt to clays and bitumen sitting on the bottom of the pond would not work, when in fact we know that the tailings pond is sitting over top of Clearwater clay, a very impermeable surface, plus the sand, the silts, the clays, and the bitumens that will seal it.
Through the process of the EIA review to the joint federal-provincial panel, that topic was dealt with in some detail. The decision report that came out addressed that, where in fact the consultants said there potentially could be some issue of concern there, where the panel members themselves said they looked at the evidence provided, recognizing that it is a highly conservative case, and they disagreed with the findings of that, based on the evidence presented to them.
That is clearly evident in our joint panel report that was issued on that.
