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What's more important for Alberta: Water or Oil?

December 4, 2007
Posted by Brent Patterson

A recent article in the Calgary Herald says that Alberta's water is already stretched to the limit and asks whether it or oil is more important to the province's future.

Some facts highlighted in the article:

• Today, petroleum producers annually use enough water from the Athabasca River basin alone to fill 70,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• Oilsands production now sits around 1.3 million barrels per day and is expected to reach three million barrels by 2015, which would require more than half a trillion litres of water per year -- double what companies use today.
• The energy industry is the top consumer of groundwater, with rights to 105 billion litres overall -- a third of the underground water marked for use.

The article also quotes a December 2006 report by Doug Radke, former Alberta Environment deputy minister, which claims that, "Water is clearly a limitation to development and a serious environmental concern." And according to former premier Peter Lougheed, also quoted in the Calgary Herald piece, without significant changes, "the issue of the water supply will become even more intense" if tar sands overdevelopment "swamps" the Athabasca region.

An Ottawa Citizen article this weekend, titled "Top scientist wants moratorium on thirsty oil sands projects," noted, "Figures from Alberta Environment show that mining operations took 78 million cubic metres of water from the river in 2006. But existing and approved operations are licensed to take almost five times that much: 363 million cubic metres."

Click here for more information on the link between the Alberta tar sands and the Security and Prosperity Partnership.