Anyone reading this should also read the @AER_news report on the state of oil sands mine tailings from September. It's here (aer.ca/documents/deci…) and it's depressing. Really depressing. 1/N #ableg
@AER_news The tailings challenge is massive. Let me kick this off by saying that the work that Mohamed Gamal El-Din and others at our universities and in industry and government research shops is very important and I REALLY hope they can solve this, but a crisis is coming fast. 2/N
@AER_news Tailings volume is increasing, timelines are staggering, and the technologies we're relying on to do a lot of work needed in the future are unproven at best, seriously flawed at worst. Fluid tailings volumes increased from 1075 to 1253 million cubic metres from 2014 to 2018 
@AER_news There's also a parallel story about process-affected water in tailings ponds. That's up too. It's another big number, although not as large as the FFT.
@AER_news (pausing for supper, but I'll be back with upsetting news about pit lakes.)
@AER_news Okay, I'm back.
How does the Alberta government deal with tailings? AER's directive 85 mandates that the companies each submit and have approved tailings managements plans. Those are posted here, along with decisions from the AER on approvals.
aer.ca/regulating-dev…
How does the Alberta government deal with tailings? AER's directive 85 mandates that the companies each submit and have approved tailings managements plans. Those are posted here, along with decisions from the AER on approvals.
aer.ca/regulating-dev…
@AER_news You'll notice that the company featured in today's @CDNEnergyCentre feature is only there partially and, as the AER explains, Syncrude's plans are incomplete and not yet fully approved. Syncrude should have submitted a new plan earlier this month, but it's not posted yet.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre From here, we go down a bit of a rabbit hole. Now, Prof Gamal El-Din is working on one specific aspect of tailings, which is getting napthenic acids out of the water, so this rabbit hole isn't really his work but rather just an offshoot of reading about Syncrude's plans.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre If you have a look at this (aer.ca/documents/deci…), it's the AER approval of Syncrude's Mildred Lake mine expansion and their (not fully-approved) tailings plan. Reading this sheds some light on where we are at re: tailings.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre If you jump all the way to p265, you'll see these two figures, which is the approved (ish) profiles for legacy tailings and new tailings through 2024. Why do things fall off a cliff in 2023? Because that's when Syncrude hopes to deploy 'water capping' as its solution.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre Then, there's a little explanation of the decision not to approve this plan fully here:
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre What's water-capping, you ask? Well, Syncrude is here with an explainer for you. And this is where my problems really start: syncrude.ca/environment/ta…
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre Syncrude states that, "Results have shown these lakes will evolve into natural ecosystems and, over time, support healthy communities of aquatic plants, animals and fish." Not sure that's true. At least not results at Syncrude so far. Also, the timelines here are staggering.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre You still here? Good. Syncrude's Mildred Lake facility is the second-oldest in the oil sands. It's been around for a long time. Its mine life is, thus, shorter than many others: it's slated to last until 2036, which is only 16 years away. But, then there is this:
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre This mine life condition implies that Syncrude must have a plan capable of treating all new and legacy tailings at the within 10 yrs of the end of mine life (so 2046) and it must be able to do show that it can do that without water-capping technology in case that's not viable.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre So, let's carry on down that rabbit hole, shall we? Water capping has always concerned me, but I'd be happy to be dissuaded by the science here. But so far, not so good. Syncrude has been running a water capping pilot at Base Mine Lake since 2012.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre Here, you really get a sense of the scale of this thing. It's massive. And the next-to-last sentence of paragraph 887 should give us all pause. The intent is, basically, to have the freshwater cap on top of the tailings deposit act as a normal lake would on the landscape.
@AER_news @CDNEnergyCentre Okay, now you should wake up because we're getting to the good stuff. Or, really, the bad stuff. It's not going well. The "presence of oil sheen and bitumen on the surface of the lake and on its shorelines," seems like a bit of an issue here.
Remember that 2023 is supposed to be the date we decide if this works ("more a set of guidelines", it seems). But this is a cascading set of problems because Syncrude has another one of these lakes that they propose to start "capping" in 2036. It gets worse.
We now go from bitumen sheen to chlorides. North Mine Lake (the second pond) is forecast to have a big chlorides problem. And the timelines are staggering.
Here's what Syncrude's modelling says about it:
Here's what Syncrude's modelling says about it:
450 mg/L is basically what you'd find at the upstream end of a tidal estuary. That's an order of magnitude higher than a typical boreal forest lake. 120 years from now...ie after 120 years of dilution. Remember that, 120 years ago, Laurier was Prime Minister.
120 years, and it will still be 3+ times higher than Alberta's surface water guidelines for chronic exposure to chlorides. 120 years.
Okay, now that you're depressed about pit lakes, let me depress you more. The scale of the problem is much larger than you think. This was a little dive into one part of Syncrude's plans. Here's all the projects we have right now. These two "end pit lakes" are at the bottom.
(this graph was used with permission from a couple of my students, but I'm not going to 'out' them here)
We may be 8-10 years from peak tailings on the landscape. We are, according to mine plans, more than 30 yrs away from having fewer tailings on the landscape than we have today. The technology on which many of these sites are relying to reduce these volumes is having issues.
Want more? Here's a $600 million tailings treatment liability (that's just to deal with one aspect of the reclamation of the site) once mining is done. That number grows rapidly if end-pit lakes don't work. We just don't know how high it might get.
And, with that, I'm out. No specific point to be made here, just know that this is one hell of a challenge, and one with which the industry has been wrestling for decades. It's coming to a head and we're not ready.
