NAMI News
The latest trinational news.Thursday, June 25, 2009
Oilsands operations change, evolve to silence detractors
Calgary Herald, June 25, 2009 - “With myriad challenges facing the oilsands--economic, political, social, environmental or regulatory --it’s astonishing that any company, let alone investor, has the stomach for dealing with all the hurdles. On Wednesday, there was yet another missive lobbed, by U. S. environmental group ForestEthics, asking U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to sign permits that would allow Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper 450,000-barrel-a-day pipeline to ship bitumen to refineries in the United States. The argument, as usual, is about the carbon footprint of the oilsands, though when looked at in terms of global emissions or relative to other sources of imported oil, or even California Thermal, the impact in either context doesn’t amount to a “hill of beans.”
But the oilsands producers are taking note of what’s happening around the world and how it is bound to affect their business. They’ve seen everything from the comments made Wednesday by U. S. President Barack Obama on the need to proceed with the clean energy legislation to investor protests at annual meetings of European companies involved in the oilsands.The reality is that these companies are setting aggressive environmental goals on their own. In Shell’s case, it is doing research and development that will put it beyond basic compliance of the new Energy Resources and Conservation Board Regulation 74 governing tailings ponds reclamation. After years of being a footnote in presentations and annual reports, the environment is garnering an increasingly larger share of the limelight.
Shell is hard at work --both in the Calgary Research Centre Lab and at its Muskeg River Mine-- looking for the solution to tailings ponds; the stuff that is part of the mining process that serves as a vehicle for the recycling of water but also contains higher concentrations of naturally occurring elements. But Shell’s not the only one. All the oilsands players are engaged in a race to find the answer to this issue, which will expedite the reclamation of the land associated with the mining process. Darrell Martindale, manager of environmental and regulatory compliance for Shell’s Albian operations and who previously worked in Indonesian copper mines, believes the solution to the tailings issue is not far off. Clearly, there seems to be a school of thought that if this issue is solved, it will take away some of the controversy over the oilsands. Still, it’s the collective size of an oilsands mining operation that remains arresting --and such an easy target. Read More.
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