Company wants to inject oil sands mine water into underground reservoir, An oilfield infrastructure company wants to use deep-well injection to sequester billions of barrels of oil sands mine water in underground reservoirs by Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, March 13, 2025, Rocky Mountain Outlook
An oilfield infrastructure company wants to use deep-well injection to sequester billions of barrels of oil sands mine water in underground reservoirs.
The project could dramatically reduce the volume of fluid tailings being managed in surface ponds, but some worry it would create its own environmental hazards and make it easier for the oil sands industry to get out of cleaning up its waste.
As of 2023, bitumen extraction and processing has produced more than 1.4 trillion litres of tailings, and millions of litres of effluent are added to tailings ponds in northern Alberta each year.
While researchers search for effective ways to reclaim oil sands tailings, the estimated 300 square kilometres of man-made lakes now storing the toxic mining by-product present massive environmental and health liabilities and have proven difficult for companies to manage.
Difficult or are the fuckers are just too greedy, like everywhere else oil, gas, frac and bitumen companies operate, to deal with their deadly waste?
Aqua Solutions Inc. (ASI), an Alberta-based corporation, is proposing the contaminated fluid not being reclaimed instead be removed from the landscape entirely by injecting it in wells deep underground.Of course these fucks are Alberta-based, and ex Alberta politician, (un)progressive conservative party minister of environment (of all things) Diana McQueen is on the board of directors! This idiotic plan stinks to hell.
Deep well sequestration has been used extensively by mining and oil and gas industries for liquid waste disposal and causes masses of damaging deadly earthquakes, and polluted aquifers but hasn’t yet been applied to oil sands mine water. ASI says by pairing existing industry practices and technologies with its novel process, they could be moving 630,000 barrels of tailing fluid per day into a reservoir in northeast Alberta as early as 2028.
ASI is currently lobbying the government of Alberta for disposal lease certainties, stating that it has identified a “high quality disposal zone” but the “infrastructure required must be matched to the volumes and the disposal certainty from government.”WTF? Do these goons want taxpayers to finance their dangerously stupid idea, and risk public safety, drinking water, and health? Get Fucking Lost.
ASI’s website says there are more than 7 billion barrels of oil sands mine water in Alberta’s tailings ponds, and that large volumes of this highly contaminated water can be “safely and permanently” disposed of to advance reclamation strategies.They lie. In my read of the endless harms, quakes and damages, waste injection by the oil and gas industry has never been safe or permanent, anywhere.
Mine water is a waste fluid which contains less solid material than denser tailings slurry. In this case, a spokesperson for ASI clarified their estimate for mine water “is a combination of the total volume of mine water plus a portion of the fluid tailings volume.”
Alberta’s energy regulator estimates the volume of mine water in tailings ponds to be about 2.3 billion barrels, and the total amount of fluid tailings to be approximately 9.3 billion barrels. The amount of water in tailings ponds fluctuates each year depending on precipitation, new waste being added, and how much water is being recycled back into oil sands mining processes.
Phillip Meintzer, a conservation specialist with Alberta Wilderness Association, said oil sands companies are supposed to have an obligation to clean up their waste products, and the deep well disposal would only move the problem “out of sight and out of mind.”
“Injecting tailings effluent underground is not actually a cleanup solution. It just moves the problem elsewhere,” Meintzer said.Precisely. And, there’s way too much of it, the resulting earthquakes will be large and deadly.
“It makes it easier for operators who are producing the tailings waste to hide that waste underground beyond scrutiny.”ASI are Evil idiots. Even more Evil and Idiotic than AER, Gwyn Morgan and Encana/Ovintiv, Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith combined.
Meintzer also raised two concerns about water. By injecting liquid waste products into underground reservoirs, “you’re eliminating water from the water cycle” and storing it elsewhere.Remember the devastating Ft McMurray wildlife of 2016? Water is needed to fight the worsening wildfires humans have created with our incessant pollution, greed and stupidity (like ASI’s). If we keep allowing industry to inject more and more billions of barrels of precious water underground, during extreme drought, watch more and more Jaspers and Ft McMurrays burn to nothing.https://ernstversusencana.ca/alberta-wildfires-extreme-drought-vanishing-water-climate-chaos-screams-as-fossil-fuel-pollution-escalates-ucp-determined-to-make-things-worse-just-so-the-rich-can-get-richer-says-nobody-coul/
Depending on the depth of the sequestration wells, there is also the risk of groundwater contamination, he said.
Pat Ward, president and CEO of ASI, said the project is being developed to meet or exceed industry standards.Ya ya ya, we’ve heard that fucking promise a million times now. And, those industry standards always fail to protect air, land, subsurface, water, public health and safety. Always. Especially because the industry regulates itself via AER. Besides, same as with deadly and risky carbon sequestration, where industry demanded the public carry all the liabilities and the corrupt Alberta gov’t of course said OK, I bet these ASI fuckers will get their pal, Dildo Danielle, to put all legal liabilities for this insane injection plan onto the public also. I expect ASI knows they will cause ever more and more and larger and larger earthquakes and damages and contaminate drinking water, and don’t give a fuck because they know polluters in Alberta are never made to pay or clean up. And, courts ruled in my case, AER owes no duty of care to any harmed Albertan, the environment, and or our ground, surface and drinking water. I searched the Aqua Solutions Inc. website this evening. I found not one word about preventing the contamination of drinking water aquifers, mitigating the severe harms to humanity and other life from permanently removing billions of barrels of water from the hydrogeological cycle, and not one word about earthquakes. Triple douche fuckers.
“Reservoir geological mapping, hydrogeological mapping and computer reservoir simulation have been completed as well as injection testing. This work confirms that appropriate subsurface containment seals are in place for groundwater protection,” Ward said.ya sure. Simulations are not reality, this is untested and novel, and Mr. Ward neglected to mention that industry has frac’d the fucking seals/caprock all to hell in that area, and each earthquake from injection will wreck those leaky seals more and more. It’s impossible to protect ground water from this insane scheme by ASI and I believe the fuckers and AER know it. Finally, industry knows it’s souring formations and rendering them deadly everywhere they invade by injecting contaminated surface water for enhanced oil recovery and in frac’ing; this stupid plan is no different.
AirdrieBorn&Raised81:
just another way for these corporations to cash in and put the locals out
Barb H.:
My reactions and concerns when I read the first couple of paragraphs were echoed word-for-word by Mr. Meintzer later in the article.
Farmer’s Son:
This is a very foolish thing to do. The tailings pond fluids are very toxic, and storing it underground will not change that. Water is present underground, and it will be contaminated with this. People still consume that water, and if they have livestock, it will too. If you see satellite images of Alberta, from outer space, you can actually see the tailings ponds. This is like putting a blanket on a pothole. It will not change what is there. Water is the most precious commodity we have, and the UCP shows no concerns about protecting it. Under the watch of the UCP, tailings pond leaks were a problem, and this will be. Coal mining in the foothills will also be another problem.
DWAL:
Just watch this government let them. Out of sight ..out of mind. Except the Alberta people have a brain. The majority of the people in Alberta are very tired of resource businesses getting away with making our water toxic by not being held accountable for the toxins and eyesores these resource extraction companies are by law supposed to clean up.
Bill Marsden’s book came out in 2016. Alberta oil, gas, frac and bitumen companies and politicos have only become more stupid, more arrogant, more polluting and more life destroying.
ASI Team Executive Management
Pat Ward, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director
40 years industry and leadership experience, most recently as Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Painted Pony Energy, which was sold to CNRL in October 2020. Mr. Ward was on the CAPP Board of Governors from 2015-2019, holds a BSc (Honours) in Geology and is a life member of APEGA. Board member
Photo from Pat Ward, President & CEO, Painted Pony Energy Ltd.
Refer also to:
2023: Wall of Wildfire at Frac Central Fox Creek, Alberta. Photo by Kyle Brittain
To Protect Water Stop Frac’ing! Stop SAGD! Stop Tarsands Mining! Stop Water Waste by Fossil Fools!
2013: Just a Fracking Few and Rosebud, Not Our Problem, Alberta Environment Minister McQueen says no need for baseline water testing yet because “There have been very few wells” frackedThis is the same Diana McQueen that is currently on the board of ASI. She was a liar then and I expect is still a liar now.
2013 03 14 Map in presentation of frac’d wells to date in Alberta by Therasa Watson, AER board member.
2012: Laurie Blakeman questions Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen on Groundwater and Hydraulic Fracturing, McQueen responds “That’s a silly question” when asked about baseline water testing before fracingMs. McQueen didn’t give a shit then about the many Alberta families harmed by frac’ing, some with dangerously contaminated drinking water. And I expect she doesn’t give a shit now either, or care about the groundwater in NE AB or the people that rely on it.