Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Gordon Lambert, and I'm vice-president of sustainable development for Suncor Energy.
We very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development's study on a national conservation plan.
To introduce Suncor for you, we've been developing the oil sands since 1967. We're currently Canada's largest integrated energy company operating in all provinces. We have refining and marketing under the Petro-Canada brand, the oil sands business, and we're very active in renewable energy--wind and biofuels.
Suncor is committed to being a good steward of the land through responsible resource development. We have public goals on land reclamation, water use, air emissions, and energy efficiency. Energy development does disturb land; there's no way around that. However, the land is not lost forever.
Suncor has adopted the triad approach to address our impacts on the land. This triad approach—think of it as a three-legged stool—consists of extensive land uses where we can apply best practices to minimize land disturbance. In-situ oil sands development falls into that category. Second is intensive land uses—mining would be an example—where the impact of the activity is very extensive. Third is protected and conserved lands.
Mining operations are considered intensive, while in-situ is considered extensive. Suncor has supported the integrated land management work, and has supported a research chair in that area over many years.
We also worked to identify conservation areas and ecological priorities, and the use of best practices to minimize land impacts. Our approach generally is simple to describe. We minimize or avoid disturbance wherever possible, as this makes good ecological and economic sense. When there is a disturbance, we use a combination of voluntary and regulatory reclamation measures to address the disturbance at a landscape level. I will mention some voluntary examples in a moment.
We are committed to reclaiming the land that we disturb and accelerating the pace of reclamation. We also undertake conservation of lands in regions where we operate working with stakeholders.
I will give you some examples of best practices. There are tremendous steps being taken. One of those is the reclamation of the first tailings pond that was built as part of oil sands development. It's now known as Wapisiw Lookout. It's the first pond closure. We're working very hard to reduce our land footprint. This is a great example of the temporal nature of reclamation of disturbed lands. That original tailings pond was built some 45 years ago, and it's now being returned to a natural state.
We also have developed and are deploying a new technology to de-water tailings, which will accelerate future pond closures to reduce our footprint on the landscape even further. This technology will allow us to cancel four planned tailings ponds. It's a great example of technology being used to minimize future disturbances. As we speak, we're in the midst of a $1.2 billion capital project to deploy that technology on a large scale.
We have also shared this technology with our industry peers. Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, recently announced, will be the vehicle for progressing on our technology that we've shared with others and for Suncor to take advantage of technologies developed by our peers.
The oil sands leadership initiative, I would highlight, has also developed a comprehensive land disturbance map of the oil sands region, documenting everything from walking and all-terrain vehicle trails to seismic lines and pipeline corridors. This past winter, the OSLI member companies revegetated the Algar region, located southwest of Fort McMurray. The treatments included winter planting and mounding of 65 linear kilometres of historic seismic lines to reduce forest fragmentation in a caribou zone.
We're proud to mention that this area is entirely off-lease from OSLI member companies' operations, and more land restoration and conservation is planned. That is, instead of member companies focusing only on our own land leases, we are looking regionally across the oil sands resource to see where it makes most sense to plant trees, initiate caribou protection programs, or carve out conservation areas.
Suncor is also a partner in a project aimed at restoring the woodland caribou herd in the west-central Alberta area of Little Smoky. Together with Conoco, we've invested $1 million in habitat restoration work in that region.
I'd like to touch on conservation for a moment. We're a strong supporter; as my Shell colleague pointed out, a number of companies participate with conservation groups that provide strong ecological and conservation solutions. Suncor and Petro-Canada supported the Nature Conservancy of Canada to advance the conservation science and explore opportunities for land conservation initiatives in the western boreal plains.
Another example is that over a nine-year partnership with the Alberta Conservation Association, through the Suncor Energy Foundation we have conserved approximately 5,000 acres in the boreal forest of northern Alberta with the goal of reducing forest fragmentation. This partnership has served as a model for other companies who are also now engaging with the Alberta Conservation Association.
Suncor has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Ducks Unlimited Canada to coordinate research into watershed function and raise awareness of the importance of wetlands. A specific example includes consultation on pipeline routings through and around wetlands. We have worked with Ducks Unlimited Canada to plan and create a pilot fen in Fort McMurray. Our work has shown that fens can be developed in decades, not centuries, as had previously been assumed.
Suncor is also a supporter of the Boreal Leadership Council, which is endeavouring to conserve 50% of the boreal forest on a national basis across Canada. It's a terrific example of a national partnership involving a vision that's been developed with 20 first nations, environmental groups, and resource companies. We also are doing work on caribou and the Mackenzie River Basin.
On biodiversity, we consult with other companies about how to minimize local impacts. That includes forest and other oil companies. This is known as integrated landscape management, and it includes sharing access roads or using land already disturbed by previous development.
Thank you.