Alberta limits oil-sands water use as province faces dry spell

JEREMY VAN LOON

CALGARY (Bloomberg) -- Alberta’s energy regulator restricted applications by oil and natural gas operators to withdraw water from the Athabasca River amid dry conditions in the province.

Restrictions for temporary diversion licenses have also been put in place for the South Saskatchewan, the Peace and Milk rivers, the Alberta Energy Regulator said on its website Monday. The regulator is also calling for voluntary restrictions from existing operators.

The Athabasca River, which is fed by glaciers and streams in the Rocky Mountains, requires about 900 cubic meters per second of water in the summer when the flow is at its peak in order to maintain healthy ecosystems, the Alberta environment ministry said on its website. The flow earlier this month was 557 cubic meters per second.

Alberta and other western Canadian provinces have suffered from above-normal temperatures this summer after a spring with less precipitation than normal, according to the Alberta agriculture ministry. Forest fires have raged across British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, halting some oilproduction earlier this year.

Oil-sands miners use water to process bitumen, and have pledged to lower by half the amount of fresh water used in production as the industry counters criticism that it pollutes too much.

Members of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, or COSIA, including Suncor Energy Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, aim to lower the amount of fresh water used to process bitumen to 0.2 bbl per bbl of bitumen by 2022 from 0.4 now, the group said on Nov. 25.