MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oil-sands producers pledged to lower by half the amount of fresh water used in bitumen processing as the industry counters criticism that it pollutes too much, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Members of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, or COSIA, including Suncor Energy and Royal Dutch Shell, aim to lower the amount of fresh water used to process bitumen to 0.2 bbl per barrel of bitumen by 2022 from 0.4 now, the group said today.
Oil-sands operators have come under attack for environmental impact including emissions of greenhouse gas and fresh-water use, helping to stall pipeline construction such as TransCanada’s Keystone XL. Production of bitumen, forecast to more than double by 2030, is the Canada’s fastest-growing source of carbon emissions.
"There is no silver bullet" to minimize the industry’s effects on the environment, said Suncor Energy CEO Steve Williams today at a presentation in Calgary. "This is a complex, multibillion-dollar business of global significance."
Oil-sands producers aim to match the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions of conventional crude operators -- or even go lower, Williams said. The group also plans targets for land and tailings from mining."
"Cosia remains a black box," Amin Asadollahi, oil sands director at Pembina Institute, an environmental advocacy and consultancy group, said in an interview. “They need to be more transparent about technology and performance."
The water-reduction target is the first numerical environmental performance goal for COSIA, which was founded by oil-sands producers to share technology.
This year, the group has overseen 68 projects with a cost of more than CD200 million (USD178 million), COSIA said.
As MRC wrote before, ConocoPhillips has struck a USD720 million deal to sell off its 100% stake in the Clyden oil sands lease in Canada to ExxonMobil and Imperial Oil.
MRC