Alberta oil sands climatological and meteorological research

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Conservation and Utilization Committee

• One oil extraction plant (GCOS) has been in operation for several years, the go-ahead has just been given for a second plant (Syncrude), a third (Shell) has an application pending, and the current energy crises may well accelerate the rate at which additional plants go into production during the next decade. This poses the problem of how to develop the oil sands on an economic basis while ensuring a minimum of undesirable effects on the total environment of the oil sands area and the surrounding region. This report will concern itself only with the atmospheric environment and where necessary with the interface between the atmosphere and the earth’s surface in terms of absorption or deposition of pollution. Although \"containment at source\" is the most effective way of protecting the atmospheric environment, current technology does not allow achievement of this goal either today or probably for some considerable time in the future. To be realistic we must therefore accept the fact that some pollution will enter the atmosphere. The basic question to be answered is: \"How much can reasonably be allowed?\" The emissions from the present plant under normal operating conditions are approximately 350 long tons of SO2 per day. Under upset conditions the plant is allowed to emit at the rate of up to 930 long tons of SO2 per day for short periods. Values for the proposed Syncrude plant will be only slightly less. Thus, while the present plant is emitting at a rate of less than one-tenth that of the Sudbury area, the combined effect of several plants in a small confined area of the Athabasca Valley could produce within ten years total emissions approaching those of the Sudbury area, or even exceeding them in the case of upset. It is therefore essential that the environmental degradation that has occurred in the Sudbury area not be allowed to occur in the Alberta Oil Sands. To do this I the maximum possible use will have to be made of meteorological knowledge for the location, design and operation of the extraction plants, in order that the effects of air pollution in the area are minimized.

• Date created

  1974

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Research Needs
  • Oil Sands
  • Oil sands
  • Tar Sands
  • Tar sands
  • Climate
  • Meteorology
  • Alberta

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PZ51Q1X

• License

  This material is provided under educational reproduction permissions included in Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development's Copyright and Disclosure Statement, see terms at http://www.environment.alberta.ca/copyright.html. This Statement requires the following identification: \"The source of the materials is Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development http://www.environment.gov.ab.ca/. The use of these materials by the end user is done without any affiliation with or endorsement by the Government of Alberta. Reliance upon the end user's use of these materials is at the risk of the end user.