Water Use History for Oil Sands Projects

Description

This item provides information on the amount of fresh and brackish water used by the oil sands projects. You can select whether you want to see this information for all of the projects, all of the in situ projects, all of the mines or any given individual project. This data can then be downloaded as a PDF or an Excel file if required. 

Details

Posted Date:	Jun 11, 2015	Source:	Alberta Energy Regulator
Date Range:	Jan 1, 1976 - Dec 31, 2015	Location:	Athabasca Oil Sands, Cold Lake Oil Sands, Peace River Oil Sands
Download this data set		View the data table

Usage Considerations

This information is updated annually, normally in the first quarter of the year. 

Projects use different amounts of water at different stages of their lives. For example:

• Some facilities have on-site upgrading and others do not. An upgrader converts the bitumen to synthetic crude oil (SCO) using steam and/or water. In general, the higher the grade of SCO produced, the more water is required.
• At mining operations, large quantities of water are temporarily contained in tailings ponds. As tailings mature, more tailings water becomes available for recycling and use in the bitumen extraction process. Recycling tailings water allows an operator to use less fresh water. 
• At in situ operations, water use varies depending on the amount of water required by the technology being used to extract the bitumen and whether a facility has the capacity to upgrade bitumen into synthetic crude oil on-site.

NB: Fresh water usage reported is a total amount representing surface water, surface runoff from precipitation and groundwater sources.  Depending on conditions, the proportion of surface water used may fluctuate.

Further Resources