HR: 0800h
AN: H41D-0455    [Abstracts]
TI: Do Massive Oil Sands Developments in a Northern Watershed Lead to an Impending Crisis?
AU: * Kienzle, S W
EM: stefan.kienzle@uleth.ca
AF: University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4 Canada
AU: Byrne, J
EM: byrne@uleth.ca
AF: University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4 Canada
AU: Schindler, D
EM: d.schindler@ualberta.ca
AF: University of Alberta, 114 St - 89 Ave, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1 Canada
AU: Komers, P
EM: petr.komers@mses.ca
AF: MSES Inc., 207 Edgebrook Close NW, Calgary, AB T3A 4W5 Canada
AB: Oil sands developments in northern Alberta are land disruptions of massive proportions, with potentially major impacts on watersheds. Alberta has one of the largest known oil reserves in the world, and developments have about 25,000 sqkm of lease areas, and have approvals for plants to develop over half a million ha (or 54 townships). This is 91% the size of Lake Erie covered mainly with tailings dams, open-pit mines and associated massive removal of forests, wetlands, and soils. With rising oil prices and declining conventional reserves, the current production of about 900,000 barrels per day will dramatically increase. There is considerable confusion over how much water is needed to extract and refine the oil. Best estimated by oil companies are 6 to 10 barrels of water for each barrel of oil. Shell Oil is aiming to bring the water to oil ratio down to 3, however, this is not yet achieved. Trend analysis of the Athabasca streamflow shows that the streamflow is declining, particularly the low flow during winter. In order to sustain a minimum flow that ensures a relatively healthy aquatic environment, the only option the oil sands companies have to ensure uninterrupted production during winter is to build large water reservoirs, which would be filled during the high flow period in spring or summer. A disturbing fact is that this need for reservoirs was never considered until a science panel initiated by the Mikesew Cree First Nation participated in two hearings in the fall of 2003, when two major oil companies applied for licenses of a massive scale each. In the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), water was to be extracted throughout the year, consequently threatening in-stream flow needs at some point in the future. Less than 1% has been reclaimed so far, with questionable success, as the new landscape will be a relatively sterile landscape with minimal biological diversity. Reclamation liabilities need to be included in mining leases. The release of naphthenic acids into water bodies through oil sands refining and potential tailings pond leaks could have huge impacts on the water quality for a large region. The short-comings in the EIAs submitted during the past two and a half years are manifold: a) the hydrological science of the EIAs is extremely sparse, with hardly any references to peer-reviewed journals; b) uncertainty analysis was not included until the 2003 hearings, and today uncertainty analysis is carried out inadequately; c) climate change impacts on streamflow and the water cycle have been totally ignored until the 2003 hearings, and today climate change impact analyses are totally inadequate; d) impacts quantification calculations are based on comparing impacted areas, such as the change of open water areas, to the total study area, instead of the associated pre-development areas, which results in highly underrated impacts quantification; e) the regions of potentially affected impacts from oil sands operations are defined to end at the inflow into Lake Athabasca, which is insufficient as substances carried with the water will flow into Lake Athabasca; f) frequency analyses are based on the wrong frequency distribution, subsequently resulting in inadequate predictions of streamflow extremes.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1807 Climate impacts
DE: 1816 Estimation and forecasting
DE: 1873 Uncertainty assessment (3275)
DE: 1880 Water management (6334)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005