Innovation flourishes at the intersection of great challenges meeting compelling solutions. Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) is an alliance of oil sands producers focused on accelerating the pace of improvement in environmental performance in Canada's oil sands through collaborative action and innovation. COSIA's membership accounts for over 90% of the oil sands product in Canada. Canada's oil sands producers are competitors and rivals; but they are also partners in a made-in-Canada collaboration model that is helping to redefine, globally, how companies can innovate together, and accelerate solution development to address some of the world's biggest challenges. COSIA companies are working aggressively to accelerate the pace of environmental performance improvement in the oil sands. Canada's oil sands industry is committed to reducing all aspects of its environmental footprint, reclaiming all lands affected by operations, and maintaining biodiversity. To create breakthrough science and technologies, COSIA brings together leading thinkers from industry, government, academia and the public. In addition, COSIA members themselves work together, each sharing considerable in-house expertise, innovation and intellectual property within the alliance, and dedicating substantial funds to COSIA's many environmental performance projects. The unique characteristics of oil sands tailings provide member companies with an opportunity to seek out innovative tailings management and technology solutions for responsible and sustainable growth of this key global energy resource. This keynote address will elaborate on each of the Environmental Priority Areas (EPA), with an emphasis on the Tailings EPA. It will provide the audience with a brief history, achievements, current technical challenges, and opportunities for collaboration to close remaining knowledge and technical gaps to accelerate the pace of environmental performance improvement.
This paper provides practical guidance for vegetative measures for slope stabilization. These measures are not a substitute for structural engineering measures.
An Analysis of Impacts on Mine Planning, Land, GHGs, Costs, Site Water Balances and Recycle Water Chloride Concentrations. COSIA requested Norwest to develop generic models to examine the relative impacts of different FFT management processes on mining and tailings capital and operating costs (capEx and OpEx), reclamation and closure costs, and environemtnal impacts. The models were based on two virtual mine scenarios selected to represent a range of conditions typical of the surface mine sites of the Athabasca oil sands region.
The purpose of this document is to provide oil sands mining operators with guidelines for creating FFT management plans, consistent with the intent of Directive 074 and other government policy and regulations. The purpose of FFT management plans is to facilitate closure of oil sands mines by accelerating the conversion of FFT into stable closure landscapes.
The Landform Design Institute (LDI) was established in 2019 to provide the knowledge, education, and support that landform design practitioners need to build truly sustainable mining landscapes, and to make landform design routine in the mining industry worldwide by 2030. The LDI has created a 2021 position paper, a library, and recorded lectures and podcasts.
The objective of this report is intended to be a technology deployment roadmap for "end to end" solutions for oil sands tailings. This technology deployment roadmap and action plan that will assist regulators and industry to create and implement technology solutions that will meet the goals of Alberta Environment (AEW) Directive 047. The report is broken into 4 components that includes a review of current technologies used in the oil sands industry, evaluation of these technologies, and highlights technologies to improve upon existing methods.
Results of Component 1 of the Oil Sands Tailings Technology Deployment Roadmap. This report gathered available information on oil sands tailings, summarized the current state of knowledge and practice, and identified and described tailings management technologies used in the oil sands and around the world. Component 1 identified 101 unique technologies, broken into 8 main tailings schemes and categorized as pre-commercial or in commercial use.
Component 3 of the Oil Sands Tailings Technology Deployment Roadmap. This report intended to develop a method to evaluate the identified tailings technologies to determine their strengths and weaknesses, in light of specific criteria provided by Component 2, and then to evaluate the technologies using the developed methodology. Eight categories of technologies (mining, extraction and bitumen recovery, tailings processing, deposition and capping, water treatment, reclamation, and technology suites) were sub-divided into three categories (commercial, development, and research).
Copmonent 4 of the Oild Sands Tailings Technology Deployment Roadmap. This report intends to identify technologies and/or suites of technologies which could improve the ability of tailings management practices to meet the previously defined goals, and the pathways by which they could be brought through the research and development process to commercial implementation.
This tool links to a variety of project assessments and restoration projects, showing the USGS capabilities and expertise with site characterization, injury, determination and restoration in the event of environmental contamination at mine sites.