Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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TA I L I N G S to interested parties and eliminating financial and intellectual-property roadblocks that might prevent tailings management advances. More recently, in March 2012, a larger group of oil sands producers formed a new alliance called Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), dedicated to "accelerate the pace of improving environmental performance in Canada's oil sands." Chief executive officers of 12 companies—including five of the six OSTC members, plus BP Canada Energy, Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips Canada Resources, Devon Canada, Nexen and Statoil—signed the alliance's founding charter, which commits the organization to establish structures and processes through which members can identify, develop and apply solutions-oriented innovation to oil sands environmental challenges, specifically water, land, greenhouse gases and tailings. (Syncrude Canada, a member of the OSTC, did not initially join COSIA but has been engaged in talks regarding possible membership.) www.e-mj.com Reading the Roadmaps The various alliances appear to have begun bearing fruit: In August 2012, outcomes from the Tailings Technology Roadmap and Action Plan project— another collaboration, this one involving the provincial corporation 'Alberta Innovates—Energy and Environment Solutions [AI-EES]' and the OSTC in partnership with Alberta Energy, Natural Resources Canada, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, and the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board—were released to the public and described as a "comprehensive review of technologies that will help industry identify the suite of technologies that are best for their operations." The roadmaps presented in this report focused mostly on tailings processing, tailings deposition and capping technologies. Suncor, for example, had completed more than $1 billion of infrastructure realignment work between 2010–2012 to implement its TRO (Tailings Reduction Operations) process, a technology it has been test- ing since 2003 that it says will allow the company to convert mine tailings into a material solid enough to be reclaimed in a fraction of the time that earlier technologies require. With this new drying process in place, according to Suncor, it expects to reduce the time it takes from initial land disturbance to having a reclaimable surface to about 10 years—a third of what is now the industry standard. Implementation of TRO-based tailings treatment, said the company, has enabled it to cancel plans for five additional tailings ponds, and Suncor expects it will be able to reduce the number of tailings ponds at its current mine site from eight to one. The first phase of the tailings-infrastructure projects to implement the TRO process was completed in the first quarter of 2012, with the second phase slated for completion by year-end 2012, and advancement of the TRO process toward full commercial scale operations is well under way with six systems operational, and a seventh under construction, Suncor reported. DECEMBER 2012 • E&MJ; 61