2011 Award Recipient
President's Award

TRO™ Tailings Management Process

Suncor is working to reduce their environmental footprint in their operations. One of the ways they are doing this is by investing $1.2 billion to implement its new TRO™ tailings management process, which they expect will reduce tailings reclamation time by up to two decades when compared to current methods.

“This is the result of a seven year effort to develop a new approach to the treatment of tailings, so they can be de-watered in days or weeks versus decades,” says Gord Lambert, Vice President, Sustainability.

Oil sands tailings are a mixture of water, sand, clays and residual bitumen. Some of the heavier materials, such as sand, settle to the bottom, while water rises to the top. The middle layer of mature fine tailings (MFT) is made up of fine clay particles suspended in water. In current methods, MFT have taken many decades to firm up sufficiently for reclamation. Active tailings ponds currently account for 18 per cent of the disturbed land Suncor is working to reclaim.

In June of 2010, Suncor secured regulatory approval to use the TRO™ process commercially and has accelerated implementation of the technology across its existing operations. The TRO™ technology development, regulatory approval and commercial implementation have already enabled Suncor to cancel plans for five additional tailings ponds at its existing mine operations. Suncor expects to reduce the number of ponds at its present mind site from eight to just one. This will shrink the total land area covered by the ponds by approximately 80 per cent.

Wapisiw Lookout

Suncor marked an industry milestone in September 2010, becoming the first and only oil sands company to complete surface reclamation of a tailings pond, a key step in returning the site back to nature. Located north of Fort McMurray, the 220 hectare site, formerly known as Pond 1, was transformed into a surface solid enough to be actively re-vegetated and reclaimed.

“It gives me a great deal of pride in seeing what we have achieved,” says Bruce Anderson, Manager Closure Planning, Oil Sands.

In 1967, Pond 1 was a storage area for oil sands tailings. As production increased, the pond was enlarged and dikes were built to create a wider, deeper basin until eventually the pond was lifted 100 meters above the Athabasca River and had a total circumference of about three kilometres.

The pond represents a 22 per cent increase in the total land reclaimed at Suncor’s mine site since the start of operations. In time, the company expects the land will become a productive forest and wetland. Over the next two decades, Suncor will maintain and closely monitor progress on site, including the growth of 630,000 shrubs and trees planted in 2010. Ongoing soil, water and vegetation assessments will help ensure the site is on course for return to a self-sustaining ecosystem.

This achievement provides a knowledge base and a living example that the entire oil sands industry can build on in the future. For the first time, Suncor, and the industry, can see a future where it may not need many tailings ponds at all.