In July 2015, one of the largest leaks in Canada's history spilled 5,000 cubic metres of emulsion — about 5 million litres of bitumen, sand and wastewater — from a Nexen Energy pipeline at a Long Lake oil sands facility, south of Fort McMurray. Bitumen is too thick to pump, so light crude oil and chemicals are added. 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Increased oil production in Canada requires greater oil transport through their traditional lands, which poses serious threats to the survival and traditional way of life of Indigenous groups, as well as the safety and preservation of the surrounding ecosystems. The overall volume of tailings has kept growing for more than 50 years. [7] The oil deposits are located within the boundaries of Treaty 8, and several First Nations of the area are involved with the sands. The first major players, Suncor Energy and Syncrude, dominated the market until the 1990s. [116], Since the beginning of the oil sands development, there have been several leaks into the Athabasca River polluting it with oil and tailing pond water. Perhaps the best example of such partnering in Alberta is the agreement between Suncor and Fort McKay and Mikisew Cree First Nations. All three of these mines are associated with bitumen upgraders that convert the unusable bitumen into synthetic crude oil for shipment to refineries in Canada and the United States. [144] In 2012 the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA) described End Pit Lakes (EPL)[145] as. “Projects are always approved by government,” Baker says. [155], Despite the best efforts of companies to move as much of the construction work as possible out of the Fort McMurray area, and even out of Alberta, the shortage of skilled workers is spreading to the rest of the province. A national carbon tax went into effect April 1, 2019. [45] Even accounting for project cancellations, this would place Canada among the four or five largest oil-producing countries in the world by 2020. In recent years, companies such as Syncrude and Suncor have switched to much cheaper shovel-and-truck operations using the biggest power shovels (at least 100 short tons, 91 t) and dump trucks (400 short tons, 360 t) in the world. [72] As of the 1990s, both the federal and provincial government have been aligned, focusing on regulation, technology and the development of new export markets. Canada does have some claim to credibility on the climate action front. Hot water at 50–80 °C (122–176 °F) is added to the ore and the formed slurry is transported using hydrotransport line to a primary separation vessel (PSV) where bitumen is recovered by flotation as bitumen froth. [71] The Constitution Act, 1867, Section 109 ensures the province full ownership of the lands and resources within its borders. Canada's Tar Sands is the third-largest proven crude oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Canada’s government has delayed passing climate legislation, instead unveiling a plan in 2007 that advocated intensity based caps on large emitters and implementation of carbon capture and storage in the oil sands industry. Suncor hoped this would reduce the time for water reclamation from tailings to weeks rather than years, with the recovered water being recycled into the oil sands plant. According to the Water Management Framework for the Lower Athabasca River, during periods of low river flow water consumption from the Athabasca River is limited to 1.3% of annual average flow. A developer has abandoned a nine-year effort to extend mining, sparing Justin Trudeau a choice between energy interests and environmental concerns. In 2009, Suncor acquired the formerly Canadian government owned oil company, Petro-Canada,[32][33] which turned Suncor into the largest petroleum company in Canada and one of the biggest Canadian companies. Surrounded by oil sands mines, it has recently sued the Alberta government to stop a project that would consume some of its last traditional hunting lands. [73] The majority of "ground-level" governance is carried out by a number of provincial institutions. [135] The Government of Alberta reported in 2013 that tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands covered an area of about 77 square kilometres (30 sq mi). In 1778, Peter Pond, another fur trader and a founder of the rival North West Company, became the first European to see the Athabasca deposits after exploring the Methye Portage which allowed access to the rich fur resources of the Athabasca River system from the Hudson Bay watershed. The province acts as the landowner and the federal government oversees jurisdiction over trade, commerce and taxation. Suncor continued to grow and continued to produce more and more oil from its oil sands operations regardless of fluctuating market prices, and eventually became bigger than its former parent company. Albert sand oils generate huge profits for the country. However, recent enhancements to this method include Tailings Oil Recovery (TOR) units which recover oil from the tailings, Diluent Recovery Units to recover naphtha from the froth, inclined plate settlers (IPS) and disc centrifuges. As a result of the oil price increases since 2003, the economics of oil sands have improved dramatically. Only a small fraction of the mined land has been reclaimed so far, however. In 2018 the Canadian government bought the pipeline project from Texas-based Kinder Morgan—the expansion is considered important for opening new markets for the oil sands. [47] If all these plans come to fruition, these five companies will be producing over 3.3 Mbbl/d (520,000 m3/d) of oil from oil sands by 2028. First Nations Engagement in the Energy Sector in Western Canada. Canada’s oil sands are the third largest proven oil reserve in the world The oil sands are the third-largest proven oil reserve in the world, representing 166.3 billion barrels (or 97%) of Canada’s 171 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (technical overview). A major hindrance to the monitoring of oil sands produced waters has been the lack of identification of individual compounds present. Dez, 7, plays in his bed in Fort McKay. Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to a new government report. [159] A smaller pipeline will also be built alongside to import condensate to dilute the bitumen. Wapisiw Lookout represents only one percent of tailings ponds in 2011 but Pond One was the first effluent pond in the oil sands industry in 1967 and was used until 1997. “Canada wants to be a climate champion,” says Kevin Taft, author and former leader of the Liberal Party in Alberta. Although some companies have invested significantly in technology to address the tailings problem, that has not put a dent in the scale of the problem, according to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based energy think tank. [171][172], This article is about the bitumen deposit. An agreement has been signed between PetroChina and Enbridge to build a 400,000 barrels per day (64,000 m3/d) pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta, to the west coast port of Kitimat, British Columbia. The mined ore is then crushed for size reduction. The International Energy Agency (IEA) lists the economically recoverable reserves, at 2007 prices and modern unconventional oil production technology, to be 178 billion barrels (28.3×10^9 m3), or about 10% of these deposits. It may contain oil sands. 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