Water Use in the Oil Sands

Oil sands operations require 2 to 4.5 barrels of water for every barrel of synthetic crude oil produced.

Oil sands mining in Alberta is a major stressor on the Athabasca River and watershed. Historically, the Athabasca River was assumed to have sufficient flows to meet oil sands operations' demand for water. Now, we understand that this might not be the case — particularly during the winter when flows are naturally lower. Increased oil sands development and growing demand for water withdrawals could result in long-term ecological impacts on the Athabasca River.

Quick Facts: Why Should We Be Concerned?

Massive Water Withdrawals

• Current mining processes require 2 to 4.5 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. Existing oil sands mining operations are licensed to divert 349 million m³ of water per year from the Athabasca River. That's twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary!

• Less than 10% of water withdrawn by oil sands operations is returned to the Athabasca River. Water contaminated with bitumen pollutants is toxic to birds and fish, and must be stored in massive tailings ponds that already cover over 50 km².

Destruction of the Boreal

• 3,000 km² of boreal forest has already been leased for oil sands surface mining. In-situ mining operations to extract deep bitumen reserves could expand the affected area to 149,000 km² — 21% of Alberta, which covers an area the size of Florida. Most of this area is contained within the Athabasca watershed.

• In 40 years of oil sands operations, less than 1% of land that has been mined or disturbed has been certified as reclaimed by the Government of Alberta, although Suncor states it has reclaimed 9% and Syncrude states it has reclaimed 22% of the land mined in its operations to date.

Losing Sight of Clean Air

• In 2003, Alberta was named the industrial air pollution capital of Canada with more than one billion kilograms of emissions. Syncrude and Suncor's oil sands facilities were ranked number one and two, respectively, as Alberta's largest polluters.

• Every day, oil sands operations use enough natural gas — a relatively clean burning fossil fuel — to heat more than three million Canadian homes.

[More on oil sands impacts]