In-situ oilsands projects graded on environmental impact

Vancouver – Oilsands companies in Alberta using steam-extraction could go a long way to reducing their growing environmental impact if they just took lessons from each other, according to a report from the Pembina Institute.

The recently-released report, Drilling Deeper, compares nine in-situ oilsands projects on a variety of criteria such as water use and greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, much the way a 2008 Pembina report compared various mining-based oilsands projects. Both studies found that by adopting best practices already being used in the industry, the overall environmental impact could be significantly reduced.

“We don’t want to impose things that are impossible,” said Marc Huot, one of the authors of the study, in a phone interview. “We’re really just trying to encourage the industries out there to at least start doing what the others are doing.”

Part of the motivation in writing the study was to better understand the environmental impact of this fast-growing segment of the oilsands.

“Given the rate of growth, we found there is still a very large lack of information on the environmental performance of this type of projects,” said Host.

And in-situ operations are sure to increase. In 2008, roughly 55% of production from the oilsands was from mining. But 80% of the estimated 175 billion barrels of crude bitumen buried in Alberta is too deep for mining, which is where in situ comes in.

Whereas mining is done in an open-pit style, with the bitumen-soaked sand physically scooped up and transported for processing, in situ involves installing pipes underground through which steam is pumped to both liquefy the thick bitumen and force it out of the ground. The less invasive in-situ process has been portrayed as having a lower environmental impact.

“There’s been a growing trend for government and industry to downplay the impacts, to separate this form from actual oilsands,” said Huot.

There is some basis for that stance. In situ can be much less water intensive, especially as the method generally doesn’t use fresh water from the Athabasca river; it disturbs much less land; and it doesn’t require the use of the much-maligned tailings pond. The ponds, which in 2009 spanned 130 sq. km and contained 720 billion litres of waste, have been one of the most visual reminders of the oilsands’ environmental impact.

But the study found that in situ has much higher GHG emissions because of the intense energy required to pump large volumes of high-pressure steam underground. Out of the projects Pembina compared, in-situ operations produce on average 2.5 times more GHGs per barrel of bitumen than mining operations.
Mining operations also produce, on average, 30% lower sulphur emissions than in situ.

The Pembina study was framed as a report card, with criteria chosen that could be compared across companies and projects.

The top performer under the rating system was Suncor Energy’s (SU-T) Firebag project, with 60%, while the lowest performer was Canadian Natural Resource’s (CNQ-T, CNQ-N) Primrose/Wolf Lake project, at 25%, while the average score was 44%.

Huot noted that if all the industry best practices already in use were incorporated into a project, a company could have achieved 85%. If a company incorporated environmental targets to reduce absolute water use, air emissions and greenhouse gas emissions, and establish biodiversity offsets, both considered by the authors to be best practices used in other industries, a company could achieve 100%.

The study showed numerous discrepancies between companies in mitigating environmental impact. All companies but one had committed to continuous improvement. But only two, Shell and Imperial Oil, were certified under ISO 14001, an internationally recognized standard for environmental management systems, or had other external oversight. As for other emissions, such as nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide , Suncor was the only one to have committed to reducing absolute emissions, by 10% by 2015.

Water use ranged extensively, from 0.4 barrel of water per barrel of bitumen to as much as 6 barrels of water per barrel bitumen. The average was 1.1 barrel, about half what the average is in mining operations. Waste water produced per barrel bitumen varied from 0.005 to as much as 4.5 barrels. Many in-situ operations have water recycling infrastructure in place, which significantly reduces both water use and waste water produced, while some operations included in the study have since installed recycling capacity.

Greenhouse gas emissions varied quite a bit, but even the lowest emitting in-situ operators produced roughly twice as much GHG per barrel than mining projects. The biggest reductions in GHG emissions came from improved steam-to-oil ratios, which depend on a number of factors. The steam-to-oil ratio also affects water use and SO2 and NOx levels.

The authors also marked each company on whether they have voluntarily set absolute reductions in any of these categories.

“A lot of the project application requirements for environmental managements, for air emissions, greenhouse gases, are actually quite weak and very minimal.” said Huot, “So that’s why one of our indicators was: do you have targets that go beyond required levels?”

Suncor was the only company to have done so, committing to reducing water use and air pollutants, but no company had committed to reducing GHG emissions.

The projects included in the study but not already mentioned  were Cenovus Energy’s (CVE-T, CVE-N) Foster Creek and Christina Lake, Imperial Oil’s (IMO-T, IMO-N) Cold Lake, JACOS‘ Hangingstone, Husky Energy’s (HSE-T) Tucker, Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDS-N, RDS-L) Peace River, and Suncor Energy’s MacKay River.

The study used data from 2007 as that was the latest year for which public data was available. The authors noted in the study that there are serious shortcomings in the amount of public data available.