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Executive Summary
Canada’s challenge is to find suitable technologies to commercially produce this resource while minimizing the environmental footprint. This is a tall order, particularly in an industry that can often face volatile commodity markets, but not an impossible task. Our Canadian experience proves that innovation and the application of technology are key. We must commit both intellectual expertise and financial resources to develop technologies that enable sustainable and profitable production. The leadership and momentum to achieve a real commitment to technology development begins with promoting and embracing a culture of sustainability. We must seek holistic, integrated solutions, optimizing our systems with balanced consideration for market opportunity, economic prosperity, profitability, social impacts and environmental management. Sponsors of this project believe that technology development will be accelerated through collaborative (non-competitive) research and freely sharing knowledge. A co-operative approach to addressing common issues requires trust among all stakeholders.
CBTAP is a fact based facilitated process involving stakeholders from industry and government, and experts from oil sands technical and environmental disciplines. This initiative begins with the identification of areas with high potential for breakthrough improvement, a review of technologies and studies to conduct gap analyses that reflect today’s practices relative to the future envisioned end state.
Leadership and collaboration are needed to accelerate the pace and increase the effectiveness of research, development and demonstration of new technologies and to place them in the hands of industry for implementation and commercialization. CBTAP was launched to ensure that, through collaboration, these challenges will be transformed into opportunities.