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ENVIRONMENT: Oil sands industry gets fail grade in first environmental report by Pembina, WWF
        (AlbertaIndex, January 16, Wednesday) --- Two leading Canadian green groups, Pembina Institute and WWF-Canada, have given Alberta’s 10 oil sands mines a failing grade for their environmental practices.
        In their first joint assessment of the industry, “Under-Mining The Environment, The Oil Sands Report Card”, the two groups said they undertook the most comprehensive comparative assessment of 10 of the province’s operating, approved or applied for oil sands mines.

In a statement, they said: “The mines, for the most part, get a failing grade. The average score among all oil sands projects surveyed was only 33 per cent, demonstrating substantial room for improvement across the sector.

“The leading operation in the survey was the Albian Sands Muskeg River Mine, scoring 56 per cent. The weakest operations were Syncrude and the proposed Synenco Northern Lights Mine both with scores of 18 per cent.”

The report card pointed out that while the majority of oil sands operations have comprehensive environmental policies in place, only two companies provided evidence of having an independently-accredited environmental management system such as ISO 14001.

With the exception of the existing Albian Muskeg River Mine, it said no operation has voluntary targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

It found out that no project or company has publicly-reported targets to reduce water usage from the Athabasca River.
Despite more than 40 years of oil sands development, not a single hectare of land has been certified as reclaimed under government of Alberta guidelines.

In the report card, Pembina Institute and WWF-Canada said the industry must improve oil sands environmental management, including greater transparency, implement currently available best-practices and commit to voluntary reductions in environmental impacts.

The report ranked the mines on 20 different environmental indicators in five categories: environmental management, land impacts, air pollution, water use, and management of greenhouse gases. Companies were invited to complete the survey questionnaire and provided with two opportunities to comment on their performance.

In total, seven of the 10 projects participated in the survey. Three companies, Total E&P, Syncrude and Canadian Natural declined to respond.

“The poor environmental performance reflects badly on the oil sands mining companies, which include the largest and most profitable major oil companies in the world. These companies have both the expertise and the resources to do much better,” said Rob Powell of WWF-Canada.

“Government must establish limits to curb impacts on fresh water, the global atmosphere, wildlife and public health.”

“We also believe an opportunity exists for companies to step up and work together to solve these environmental challenges,” said Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute. “Let’s get the best engineers available focused on environmental performance.”

“There is growing concern in Alberta, in the rest of Canada and internationally about the environmental impacts of oil sands mining,” said Dan Woynillowicz of the Pembina Institute. “Despite these concerns we found that oil sands companies are making weak efforts to manage their environmental impacts. We found only one mining operation came close to a passing grade and that substantial improvements in environmental performance were possible for all projects.”

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