Alberta to explore injecting oilsands tailings underground

The Alberta government says it is considering letting oil companies inject wastewater deep underground as a way to manage the toxic tailings that are accumulating in the oilsands.

Tailings are the water, clay, sand and a small amount of leftover bitumen that remain after most of the bitumen has been removed from oilsands during the extraction process at the mine.

The idea is one of five being put forward by a government-appointed committee tasked with studying potential tailings management options.

A new report from the committee says injecting mine water underground is a practical solution but considering over 1.4 trillion litres of tailings exist as of 2023, it can’t be the only option.

The committee says tailings could be disposed of underneath many layers of impermeable rock so as not to ruin sources of drinking water.

It’s also recommending that Alberta make policy changes to encourage companies to share wastewater across different types of oil mining facilities in order to reduce the need for freshwater use and the production of further tailings.

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The government says the committee’s recommendations will be evaluated over the next six months before a new tailings management plan is released.

— More to come…