Recent legislation for the oil sands industry in northern Alberta, Canada requires that legacy tailings deposits (hydraulically transported slurry, sub aerially deposited into ponds), as well as all future tailings production must be trafficable - in other words be able to be capped and closed and become part of the natural habitat).

The complexities within the industry in this regard are vast, including production rate, variation in ore/overburden/bedrock, mining methods, milling and extraction methodologies, site conditions, additional regulatory requirements, etc.

For the past several years, oil sands companies have been pouring millions of dollars into the development of new technologies/methodologies that will achieve this requirement.

More recently the Alberta Government, in partnership with Industry, initiated a “Tailings Roadmap Study” to help identify technologies that could potentially be commercially utilised to address these concerns. A Consortium of Tailings Management Consultants (CTMC) was awarded a contract by Alberta Innovates – Energy and Environmental Solutions (AI-EES), to prepare an oil sands tailings technology deployment roadmap.

The intention of the four-part project was to assist industry and Government to identify where best to concentrate their efforts. This paper discusses the site conditions, evolution of tailings management and possible new processing and deposition concepts (some are currently used in the mineral industry but not in the oil sands) that are currently being explored to facilitate the formation of trafficable landscapes and includes a brief discussion of the tailings roadmap study.

It is important to note that although the mineral industry is currently utilising many of the proposed techniques to address their tailings deposition needs, the oil sands industry has a historical tendency to develop their own solutions to their unique issues as opposed to looking outside the province or industry for ideas or best practices.