Preamble

• Main Author: Market Based Solutions
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Athabasca River; Canada; Mackenzie River; Mackenzie river
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.85.9118; http://www.ualberta.ca/ERSC/water.pdf

Alberta’s oil sands (174 billion barrels) 1 are not only the world’s largest capital project but now represent 60 per cent of the world’s investable oil reserves. 2 But to produce one million barrels of oil a day, industry requires withdrawals of enough water from the Athabasca River to sustain a city of two million people every year. 3 Despite some recycling, the majority of this water never returns to the river and is pumped into some of the world’s largest man-made dykes containing toxic waste. 4 During the past year a variety of industry and government agencies have recognized that the intensive water requirements of unconventional oil, combined with climate change, may threaten the water security of two northern territories, 300,000 aboriginal people and Canada’s largest watershed: the Mackenzie River Basin. The Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada, for example, recently stated that its “largest concern ” in the oil sands was water use and reuse because “bitumen production can be much more fresh water intensive than other oil production operations. ” 5 A 2006 Alberta report (Investing In Our Future) noted that “over the long term the Athabasca River may not have sufficient flows to meet the needs of all the planned mining operations and