Oil sands industry alliance aims to reduce environmental impact through innovation

Largest academic partner is U of A

The oil sands sector is taking aggressive steps to reduce its environmental footprint through innovation, with the formation of an industry alliance that will see companies sharing R&D and technological advancements in several key areas. Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) will scale up and pool R&D conducted by its members organizations and collaborate extensively with academia.

The Univ of Alberta will likely be its primary source of non-corporate research. That institution has spent the past several years building up its research capacity related to oil sands production and environmental remediation.

COSIA represents 12 companies that account for 80% of oil sands production and is in discussion with other firms that could increase that representation to 90%. Its R&D efforts will focus on improving industry performance, in water and land usage, the reduction of greenhouse gases and tailings management.

"This (the oils sands) is a very important resource for Canada and what the companies are doing is very exciting. They're willing to change their paradigm to improve performance," says Dr Dan Wicklum, COSIA's inaugural executive director. "This is a new model that is globally unique at this scale. It will simplify the superstructure into a single collaboration structure."

COSIA will be the primary vehicle for oil sands R&D as it relates to the environment. It will absorb three existing bodies — the well-established Canadian Oil Sands Network for Research and Development (CONRAD), the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative (OSLI) and the recently created Oil Sands Tailings Consortium (OSTC) (R$, September 28/11).

Formed last year, the OSTC pooled about $90 million in R&D conducted by members that generated tailings reductions valued at $1 billion. The OSTC office operated on a budget of $1.2 million and was headed up by Dr Alan Fair who has joined COSIA.

The intention of the alliance is to develop a single point of contact to the industry by providing leadership to drive COSIA's activities down to its member organizations, establish and conform to regional environmental performance goals, and perhaps most importantly, leverage R&D from all sources by serving as a central hub for innovation.

Statistics Canada recently reported that industry spending on energy R&D related to oil sands and heavy crude oil technologies totaled $478 million in 2009 (the latest year for which data are available). This includes R&D supporting surface and sub-surface production and separation of bitumen and tailings management (R$, May 1/12).

"We don't fund research but companies through COSIA will work to remove barriers in intellectual property, human resources and funding," says Wicklum, a star Canadian Football League player in the 1980s and early 1990s, who later became a senior advisor to Alberta MP Ralph Goodale and executive director of the Canadian Forestry Innovation Council. "Within a defined scope, companies will share innovation on everything from patents to best practices and research results."

In collaboration with academia, COSIA plans to cast its sights globally to source the best ideas, practices and products regardless of their origin. But its largest collaborator will almost certainly be with the Univ of Alberta, which is situated about 300 km south of the oil sands. Over the past 15 years, U of A has boosted its oil sands-related research capacity and is well positioned to both contribute to, and benefit from, advances that are introduced into production processes.

The university has more than 100 faculty members conducting related research. Taken together with graduate students and post doctoral fellows, the U of A's oil sands effort involves more than 1,000 people. U of A is also home to 19 NSERC Industrial Research Chairs devoted to oils sands research which have attracted matching industry funds as well as funding from the Government of Alberta.

In FY10-11, NSERC investments in oil sands and heavy oil totalled $12.5 million, up from $2.8 million in FY04-05. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has also made significant investments — $16.6 million since 2002.

"The U of A and the faculty of engineering would be unequivocally the largest collaborator with the oil sands sector," says Dr David Lynch, U of A's dean of engineering. "Our 19 research chairs all touch on oil sands and represent the largest number of research chairs of any university in Canada, and many chairs have multiple partners."

"Our industry has environmental impacts, which we will work to minimize. Action will reflect a strong commitment to innovation and collaboration and be focused on key environmental priorities in our environmental performance." — COSIA Charter

U of A's experience working with the OSTC bodes well for collaboration with COSIA, says Lynch.

"COSIA gives us a very straightforward platform by which we can approach the entire industry on major research topics," adds Lynch. "It provides a single window of contact to enable projects to move forward more quickly to increase productivity and accelerate innovation. This is a very significant development. Don't underestimate how complex it is to do this at all stages of development."

Lynch is an enthusiastic supporter of oil sands research and the industry. He was recently featured in a advertisement produced by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers — the industry's main lobbying group — extolling the oil sands-related research capacity of the U of A.

"The environment is an area where there's no need to compete and everybody wins. I believe it will result in more research being done here and less duplication. More effective spending and deployment of science and technology will result in the more effective use of financial and human resources," says Lynch. "This is the creation of one of the world's largest industries. It's essentially a huge manufacturing industry and anything but a traditional oil and gas industry."

In addition to collaborations with universities, COSIA will seek out innovation from non-traditional sources such as the Aboriginal community. It programs will also engage smaller firms which could commercialize technologies outside of member firms' core mandates.

"Any time you get people working together for common ends is good. The key mechanism is the sharing and leverage of innovation. It's never been tried before at this level," says Wicklum. "Reaction for the most part has been positive. It's difficult not to support environmental performance to make it more effective and efficient. Other stakeholders are supportive of the goals but are taking a wait-and-see attitude to see if the model works."

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