Waste management in the petroleum industry is a daunting task regulated by the Energy Resources Conservation Board
The sheer volumes of oilfield waste strain government data systems
The story of petroleum is a story of waste.
Consider the volumes involved: At perhaps 3.5 million barrels per day, Canada is the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, and at 16.9 billion cubic feet per day, the third-largest natural gas producer. Add in the gas liquids and related products and the sheer volume of fossil fuels that flow out of the Canadian soil starts to become astronomical.
And these numbers measure “spec” oil and gas – products that are clean enough for pipeline transport. Consumers rarely consider the huge amounts of waste created as the industry brings its output up to spec.
At every stage, considerable volumes of waste need to be treated. Consider the sources of upstream oilfield waste. Seismic surveys, wellsite construction and drilling produce wastes ranging from bush cuttings to rock chips to drilling and fraccing fluids. Production wastes include salty byproduct water, gunk in tailings ponds, contaminants like carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, and soil contaminated with sulfur. Once a plant needs to be decommissioned or a well shut in and abandoned, the producer creates more wastes that need to be carefully managed.
How much waste is involved? In Alberta, the Energy Resources Conservation Board regulates oilfield wastes. After a lengthy explanation of the limitations of the board’s computer system, Susan Halla, a regulatory manager, says, “We’ll be able to give you exact information in 2011.” In the meantime, she won’t even guess.
Even when detailed data are available, it will be incomplete. The reason is that most wastes from oil sands mining operations are not considered oilfield wastes. They are classified as “industrial wastes” and regulated by Alberta Environment rather than the ERCB.
Petroleum waste only begins in the “upstream,” exploration and production side of the industry. Once spec products flow through the pipeline into the “downstream,” refining and distribution processes produce wastes of their own. Like waste from oil sands mining, they are classified as “industrial wastes” and regulated by Alberta Environment.
By far, however, the largest volumes of physical waste occur in the distant downstream end of the petroleum products life cycle. Many items – plastics and chemicals, say – end up in landfills and dumps, unregulated incinerators, beaches and worse. Equally important, consumers burn natural gas and refined products to generate energy, thereby yielding carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and a variety of other unsavory incidentals. As emissions, however, they are technically not considered “wastes.”
The seriousness of upstream waste management did not become clear until the 1980s. An ERCB chairman of the era, the late Vern Millard, once explained, “We used to think Earth could absorb any amount of human waste without a problem. It has now become clear that it can’t.”
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