Ponderosa Environmental and Water Resources Inc.
July 8, 2016
Executive Summary
This report has been prepared for the Petroleum Technology Alliance of Canada (PTAC) to research available sources of water use data in Western Canada. Funding was received through the Alberta Upstream Petroleum Research Fund.
The goal of this research is to develop an understanding of the water use data available from public and regulatory domains. In general, regulatory jurisdictions in western Canada have a consistent approach for managing water resources although there are significant differences in the policies, guidelines, and systems utilized for authorizing and tracking water used for upstream oil and gas development.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) published an annual progress report as part of the Responsible Canadian Energy (RCE) program in 2013 and 2014 summarizing data collected in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The RCE program is designed to track the social and environmental performance of the upstream oil and gas industry in Canada. The publication includes several facts and statistics related to social performance, health and safety, air, water, and land. GEOWA has collected and processed water use data for CAPP dating back to 2009 in order to monitor trends in water use for the upstream oil and gas industry. In 2016 CAPP’s Board of Governors determined that member data collection is not a priority and all elements of the RCE program are currently on hold. In 2014 and 2015 water use data was collected but annual RCE reports were not issued. In an effort to streamline reporting efficiently and improve data capture and quality, CAPP continues to pursue centralization of water data from public and regulatory sources. This report is intended to review existing data sources and processes used by GEOWA and document descriptive information about the data. A secondary objective includes identifying new data sources, documenting the similarities and difference between datasets, and scanning for missing water use information.
The deliverables include a water data catalog providing the available sources of water use data or other data in the absence of water use data. In order to provide context, this report includes water volumes used in western Canada in 2014.
Important findings from this report include:
The recommendations for water data enhancements include:
# 15-WIPC-08