The group has formed “Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance,” or COSIA, to spread research and technology development in several key areas of environmental performance. Those areas include greenhouse gases, land disturbance, water, air emissions and management of tailings, the toxic effluent produced by oil sands mines.
It is an “ambitious and perhaps unprecedented sharing of intellectual property around environmental technologies,” said one person familiar with the plans.
The group's members, together, produce the vast majority of crude flowing from the oil sands. They are BP PLC (BP-N47.840.681.44%), Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNQ-T37.410.681.85%), Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE-T38.950.491.27%), ConocoPhillips Co. (COP-N78.221.672.18%), Devon Corp. (DVN-N74.130.821.12%), Imperial Oil Ltd. (IMO-T47.420.130.27%), Nexen Inc. (NXY-T20.570.401.98%), Royal Dutch Shell plc, Statoil ASA, Suncor Energy Inc. (SU-T35.840.220.62%), Teck Resources Ltd. (TCK.B-T39.56-0.06-0.15%) and Total S.A.
Their alliance builds on a series of efforts that have seen oil sands companies increasingly come together in the face of global criticism of the “dirtiness” of their oil.
Critics, however, say partnering on technology will do little to dispel that image, unless industry is willing to commit to binding performance targets.
“In the absence of any commitments to real reductions in pollution with penalties for not meeting them, this is simply another example of “greenwash”, where an industry association makes vague promises to clean up its act in order to ward off regulations with real teeth,” said Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada.
Facing calls to reduce the ecological and climate change footprint of their operations, companies have struggled to find new technologies that can help clean up their act.
But coming up with new ways of tapping the oil sands poses a formidable challenge. Producing the huge resource requires tremendous amounts of capital, and companies are loathe to spend billions on technologies without being absolutely certain they will work. By coming together, they can access a much broader array of people who might have novel ideas. They can also spread the risk of testing and proving those new ideas.
Former federal environment Minister Jim Prentice applauded the industry effort.
“I think it is extremely important. If you're in the energy business today, you are also in the environment business - they're the flip side of the same coin,” Mr. Prentice, who is now the vice-chairman at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, told the Globe and Mail's editorial board. “So if we are going to be leaders in the world energy business, it means we've got to be on the cutting edge of the adoption of new technologies, and be innovative in reducing the environmental footprint.”
He said industry doesn't necessarily need a higher price on carbon to encourage companies to make the massive investments that will be required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, noting that Alberta already has a modest levy.
“I think industry is pretty motivated on this. If you talk to industry leaders, the reason they are doing this is that they are fully aware of the imperative of being on the cutting edge of environmental performance, and they're making the investments,” Mr. Prentice said.
But emissions will rise inevitably as the industry expands production from 1.5-million barrels per day to 3.5-million barrels over 2020 years, he said.
A similar alliance, called the Oil Sands Tailings Consortium, was formed to share knowledge on cleaning up mine waste. That consortium will be merged with the Canadian Oil Sands Network for Research and Development under the new alliance, according to a presentation posted online by workers with Barr, an engineering firm.
Several oil sands companies have not signed on to the group, including Husky Energy Inc. and several smaller producers, like Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., MEG Energy Corp. and Laricina Energy Ltd.
A formal announcement of the innovation alliance is scheduled for Thursday morning in Calgary.
Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: nathan vanderklippe
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