Oilsands Face Severe Water Shortages

Oilsands may face severe water shortages, Athabasca River study suggests

The river that provides water to the oilsands industry is much more prone to multi-year droughts than modern records show, suggesting that the industry's current level of water use may not be sustainable, a new study suggests.

The oilsands industry needs 3.1 barrels of fresh water to produce a barrel of crude oil from oilsands mining and 0.4 barrels of fresh water to produce a barrel of crude oil from oilsands drilling, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

That water comes mainly from northern Alberta's Athabasca River, and oilsands account for 72 per cent of estimated water use from the river.

The government regulates the amount of water the oilsands industry is allowed to use based on measurements of water flow taken by dozens of monitoring stations along the river since 1957.

But a study led by University of Regina researcher David Sauchyn has found that those water flow measurements aren't that representative of the river's long-term behaviour.

"What we show is if you go back 900 years, the river is much more variable than you would think based on measurements since 1950s," Sauchyn said.

In order to get centuries' worth of data, Sauchyn and his colleagues drilled pencil-sized cores from live trees and cut cross sections of dead trees to measure their rings. They sampled hundreds of very old Douglas firs and limber pine trees growing on the dry slopes in the upper part of the Athabasca basin. Some of them had started growing as long ago as the year 1111.

The trees put on one growth ring every year. The ring is thicker if the growing conditions are better and thinner if the tree grows less due to a shortage of sunlight, nutrients, heat or water.

"On the prairies in summer, there's plenty of everything except water," Sauchyn said, "so really what the growth of the trees tell us is how much water was available to the tree every year over its lifespan. It's the same water that's available to the river as well."

The researchers compared the "climate record" found in the tree rings to measured water flows in the Athabasca River since 1952 and found a very close correlation. They then used that to estimate water flows going back 900 years.

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Taxonomy

• Oil Sand Extraction
• Drought
• Water Management