Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance

Oil sands development in Alberta requires a great deal of water from streams and rivers. Today, there are primarily two uses of water. Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It uses steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells is drilled into the oil reservoir, one a few metres above the other. High-pressure steam is continuously injected into the upper wellbore to heat the oil and reduce its viscosity, causing the heated oil to drain into the lower wellbore, where it is pumped out. Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage and Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) are two heat-based recovery processes for use in the oil sands. Both approaches use water for oil recovery.
The oil sands industry created COSIA the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance in 2010 as the coordinator of technology sharing and research efforts and Alan Fair became director of its tailings EPA - an acronym for “environmental priority area.” Before joining the organization, Fair had spent 32 years at Syncrude.
To achieve this organizational "aspiration," COSIA has two performance goals for in situ and mining water use. The organization expects its members, which include in situ and mining operators, to do the following. In Situ operators should strive to reduce freshwater use intensity by 50 per cent by 2022.
Members with mining operations - Syncrude, for example.

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