Water Stewardship at Suncor- 2023 Report on Sustainability

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / October 18, 2023 / We broke new ground when we first began publicly reporting our sustainability performance in the mid-1990s. Twenty-eight years later, our Report on Sustainability and its companion publication, the Climate Report, continue the practice of disclosing our progress in more than a dozen areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Read more on our ESG progress in our reports here.

Effective water management is crucial to our business today and in the future.

The Athabasca watershed has a deep cultural significance for the region's Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge its spiritual importance to community members and the understanding that the health of the rivers, landscape, wildlife and people are all interconnected. We believe in meaningful engagement that respects the unique and constitutional rights of Indigenous Peoples, including treaty rights and their deep connection with land and water. By continuing to learn about the rights, history, customs, beliefs, traditions and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples, we can apply this knowledge to our water management practices. This journey starts with the understanding that we all share the same aspiration for a healthy ecosystem. Water is an essential part of our operations so it's important to effectively manage its use across our business. To date, these efforts include minimizing withdrawal of fresh water, recycling water and storing it safely. Even with these practices in place, we face a serious challenge in managing the volume of water currently stored on our mine sites. This includes water used in our extraction and production processes, precipitation and surface runoff that comes into contact with our mines. In addition to our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle water, safely removing and returning treated water from our sites to the watershed is a necessary step to achieving progressive reclamation and mine closure. Working together with Indigenous communities, we will strive to identify solutions to achieve progressive reclamation and our mine closure outcomes and commitments.

Regulatory requirements
While we regularly submit updates of our reclamation and closure plans to the Alberta Energy Regulator, we are waiting for the federal and provincial governments to finalize the criteria for safely releasing treated water. Returning treated water is a global best practice used by municipal, commercial, industrial and agricultural sectors. Governments regulate water releases to protect the receiving waterbodies and downstream users. Other types of Canadian mines - including copper, nickel, iron ore, diamond and gold operations - have regulations to treat and release water used in their processes. The federal government is committed to developing these regulations for the oil sands by 2025. Having these regulations in place will allow us to restore and reconnect ecosystems in areas where we've operated. Our systems, combined with strict regulations, will ensure water can be safely released and protect the environment (fish, insects, birds, plants, animals) and downstream users. Once the criteria for releasing treated water are established, we can design treatment plans to meet these objectives. Regulations are key in our efforts to achieve our reclamation and closure plans, which require reducing the amount of water stored on site, avoiding the need to disturb more land for additional water storage and returning the landscape to a self-sustaining ecosystem. We will continue to work with governments, communities and stakeholders to develop the policy and regulatory framework to enable the safe release of treated mine water from our oil sands sites and reduce the need for more tailings facilities. Working together with Indigenous communities, we will work to identify water management solutions that respect their unique constitutional and treaty rights and acknowledge their deep connection with the land and water.