It’s just a dried out plot where nothing much grows. But it looks like something could, given a bit of water. It looks like fertile dirt.

And that’s exactly what is so exciting to Martindale, because that dirt patch is tailings. To a large extent, reclamation depends on how quickly tailings, normally about as solid as a sand dune, can be compacted so that they can be walked upon and hold up land that will support new growth.

This particular project takes thick tailings and adds gypsum to replace the bitumen that was extracted from oil sands ore. The process manufactures dry tailings. Normally, water is used in tailings storage, but this method will use less water and make reclamation faster.

“This is game-changing technology,” beams Fred Kuzmic, team leader of reclamation and research at Shell Canada, senior partner in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project. According to Kuzmic, the pilot project will be ready to grow into full, commercial size by 2014. Now, it is just a matter of testing to make sure a quality product is manufactured consistently. While there are few industry secrets when it comes to reclamation, Shell hasn’t shared the specifics of this process with its competitors. That’s because, although you can’t really speak of one without the other, it’s important to separate tailings management technology from reclamation, explains Martindale. Still, Kuzmic assures us that every company is working on similar project.

The projects are similar in purpose, if not in process. Consolidated, or non-segregated tailings is just one method operators are going to rely on to meet the new regulations, even if it seems to be favored within the body of Directive 074, especially in the earlier draft of the directive that industry got to see last spring. Stringham says that there continues to be back and forth on this issue between operators and the ERCB. “Some of the companies are going beyond the consolidated tailings and moving to the dry tailings technology and that’s where the companies have a long term target on it,” says Greg Stringham, VP oil sands and markets for CAPP. So companies either have to switch strategies, or other methods have to be legitimized. But according to Mikula, Directive 074 took the complaints of industry and ran a little too far, now making too little reference to the importance of consolidated tailings.

However you look at the directive, the timeframe doesn’t change. To reach these deadlines, Syncrude isn’t just relying on consolidated tailings, but has three main technologies, two of which have been implemented now, and the other is still on the horizon, explains Cheryl Robb, media advisor at Syncrude. Their DDAs filled in with consolidated tailings are already far along in their process; by next year re-planting of vegetation will commence on their east mine. In the west mine, the other original mine dug decades ago, has been devoted to water-capping technology, where mature fine tails are covered with water to create a lake. “That’s a tailings technology that we have been researching for more than 20 years,” Robb says. “That technology was started at the bench scale, in a barrel, then in test ponds. Now they’ve proved to be successful in being able to support vegetation and aquatic life.” Robb says that west mine, when it is completed in the next few years, will be the first full commercial demonstration of water capping technology.

The day after reporters saw the barren field of dirt at Shell’s Albian site, Syncrude showed the same group of note takers and camera wielders to their water capping test site. A casual observer would never know that the land was being reclaimed or tested. It is a group of small ponds reflecting back the sun, as ducks glide across the water. Picturesque: a much better image than what the operators have faced in the past.

Syncrude is also researching centrifuging, which basically involves, as the name suggests, spinning out water from the fine tails, which creates a more dense tailing much quicker. Mikula, though he doesn’t work for Syncrude, is most excited by this development. Not only is it faster, but he says that it offers instant feedback, “right out of the pipe,” as to the quality of the tailings, and that means reclamation can be more efficient. “It also promises to save more water,” he says.

Other methods operators are looking at use CO2 the same way gypsum is used to create consolidated tailings, which has the benefit of reusing a byproduct oil sand operators are already sensitive about.
As promising as these technologies are, they don’t work overnight. The fact is, reclamation takes a long time, even with the added push of Directive 074 and its hard and fast deadlines, even if those deadlines are too weak according to critics, and too challenging for others. Mikula is just happy that there is accountability firmly entrenched, which is something oil sands operators can get behind. With the price of oil rebounding, not only is production worthwhile but reclamation technology is too.

According to Mikula, that’s one of the reasons the environmental turn around takes so long. Not only do operators have to have land to reclaim, but the technology to bring about that reclamation doesn’t come cheap. That plot of dirt at the Shell mine represents a $100 million dollar investment.

But back to the bison: they don’t care about the cost. They just care about having ground solid enough to roam and roll around on. The operators just have to make sure that ground keeps coming. Now they’ll be held accountable, and not just by the bison.

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