Does the oil sands production process permanently damage the land on which it takes place?

Answer:

By law, oil sands development areas have to be restored to their natural state by Canadian companies operating there. Moreover, $2 billion investments have been made in carbon capture and storage technology to further reduce GHG emissions. Canadian oil producers and the government have laid out a comprehensive strategy to protect the environment while extracting oil sands. 

Oil sands mining produces tailings. Oil sands tailings are a mixture of water, clay, sand and residual hydrocarbons that are left over after oil is extracted from mined material. These are stored in a pond, where the heavier components —mostly sand—settle over time. Eighty-five percent of the water settling on top of the pond is recycled. In an exciting new development, Canadian energy company Suncor has developed a way to speed up the tailings process as well as a new technology that will eliminate the need for tailings ponds altogether. In fact, Suncor has transformed tailing ponds back into a state to support grasses and thousands of tree seedlings.

How is this possible? The reclamation process involves filling in the pond with a dried out clay residue called mature fine tailings (or MFTs), which forms a new bed beneath a layer of muskeg, the spongy topsoil that nourishes Alberta’s boreal forest. Suncor’s Wapisiw Lookout is a great example of land that has undergone this reclamation process.