The development of Canada’s oil sands has attracted considerable attention in Canada and elsewhere in the last few years, mainly due to the impact of oil sands projects on the local environment, and the fact that they constitute an important source of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.1 Among the impacts of oil sands projects on the local environment, land reclamation deserves special attention by investors, as there are many uncertainties regarding the effectiveness of current approaches to reclamation (in particular of wetlands and of tailings, the waste stream that results from oil sands mining), and new technologies remain unproven. These uncertainties indicate that reclamation may prove much more costly and difficult to achieve than anticipated.
Oil sands operators are required to reclaim disturbed land to an “equivalent land capability,” which is defined as the ability of the land to support uses that are similar but not necessarily identical to those that existed before mining.2
Despite companies’ assurances that disturbed lands will be reclaimed to viable ecosystems, after nearly fifty years of mining, only 0.2% of disturbed land has been certified as reclaimed by the government of Alberta (companies claim to have reclaimed 13.6% of the disturbed land, but it is unclear whether they meet regulatory requirements to obtain a reclamation certificate), and no tailings pond has been reclaimed to date.3 Suncor projects to finalise the reclamation of Pond 1 in 2010, but the process will consume virtually no “mature fine tailings,” the portion of the mining waste stream that has proven most difficult to reclaim (see section 2.1 for details).
In an effort to help our clients assess the risks associated with land reclamation, in May 2009 SHARE initiated a dialogue with five Canadian companies involved in mining projects in Alberta’s oil sands region. Considering the specific features of different projects, we inquired about each company’s success in the area of tailings and land reclamation, and steps taken to mitigate key risks associated with reclamation.
This briefing note summarizes those discussions, highlighting areas where greater information will be required if shareholders are to be able to thoroughly assess the value of their investments. While most questions are relevant to mining operations (notably, in situ projects do not create tailings), the issue of wetland restoration and compensation may be relevant to all projects, and therefore merits consideration by all investors.