New Alberta oil sands waste rules

November 27, 2008 CALGARY -- Alberta's Energy Resources and Conservation Board (ERCB), the province's oil and gas regulator, has been working on a new set of rules to mitigate the environmental impact of oil sands developments.

The board is to require companies involved in oil sands activities to explain their plans for reducing waste, or tailings, and setting out a schedule for tailing pond land reclamation. The industry has come under fire this year for not being more diligent or efficient in reducing this toxic pollution, and the issue reached boiling point in early May when hundreds of ducks died after landing in a tailings pond belonging to Syncrude

The board is currently in the process of finalising the new rules with industry co-operation, and is expected to officially announce them in the near future. The new requirements are likely to pose an additional cost for developers, but it is unclear at this point how much of a financial burden this is going to be.

With oil prices in decline, and the short-term economic prospects for oil sands less healthy than they once were, the new regulations could prompt companies to scale back activities further until prices recover. This in turn could prompt the regulator to delay the full implementation of these new rules by several years.

© 2008, Global Insight Limited.