Environmental Management of the Alberta Oil Sands: New Federal and Provincial Initiatives

Wednesday, February 08, 2012 4:10:00 PM - Wednesday, February 08, 2012 6:00:00 PM
Rm. 1190, Bahen Centre, 40 St. George Street
Environment Seminar



ANDREW MIALL, Professor of Geology, University of Toronto

ABSTRACT: Research by respected environmentalist David Schindler (University of Alberta) published in 2010 demonstrated that water pollution studies being carried out at the behest of the government of Alberta and the oil sands industry were not accurately reporting the presence of pollutants that may be responsible for deformities in the freshwater fish population and for unusual cancers in the First Nations population at Fort Chipewyan, which is downstream from the oil sands development area. Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice established the Oil Sands Advisory Panel in October 2010. The completion of studies by this panel coincided with the release of an independent report on the “Environmental and health impacts of Canada’s oil sands industry” by the Royal Society of Canada in December 2010. Both the federal study and the RSC study concluded that many of the current environmental concerns were overstated, but that considerable further research was necessary, that existing regulation and management methods were inadequate, and that much more extensive and more sophisticated scientific monitoring of the industry was required. In January 2011 Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner established the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Panel, which built on these earlier studies and delivered a report in June 2011 containing twenty recommendations, most of them centred on the establishment of an independent Environmental Monitoring Commission. This presentation outlines the scientific basis for the environmental concerns, and the methods being proposed for their resolution.

BRIEF BIO: Andrew D. Miall, B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., FRSC, is Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto, and the inaugural incumbent of the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology. He was educated in London, UK, and Ottawa, and has worked for Shell Canada and J. C. Sproule and Associates. From 1972-1979 he was a Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, Calgary, carrying out regional basin studies in the Arctic Islands. He is the holder of a Higher Doctorate (D.Sc.) from University of London and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria. He was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 1995 and has served terms as Vice-President (2005-2007) and President (2007-2009) of the Academy of Science. Andrew is the author of Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis, The Geology of Fluvial Deposits, and The Geology of Stratigraphic Sequences. He is the co-author (with Nick Eyles) of Canada Rocks: the Geologic Journey. He is currently devoting much of his time to speaking and writing about issues at the nexus of energy and the environment. He was a member of the federal Oil Sands Advisory Panel (October-December 2010) and the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Panel (January-June 2011).