Freshwater makeupSAGD and Thermals are water management production monster machines. Most Bitumen operators recycle injected steam and produced water at > 90% rates. But they also need to top up with fresh water. Operators like MEG use underground sources for make up water, others from rivers.
CVE has an amazing info packed ESG report each (recent) year.
| CVE 2022-ESG-Report Slides 82, 83 | | |
| Fresh water intensity | | | | |
| | 2030 | | | | |
| bbl h2o/boe | Target | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Oil Sands | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.15 | 0.15 |
| Thermals | 2.9 | 4.00 | 3.71 | 3.85 | 3.62 |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| Fresh water withdrawal | | | |
| 10^3m^3 | | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Oil Sands | | 3,342 | 3,355 | 3,873 | 3,696 |
| Thermals | | 23,203 | 20,998 | 18,530 | 17,210 |
| | | | | | |
| WS4 Drilling and completions volumes are excluded from total fresh water withdrawn volumes and fresh water intensity values. |
Notice the diffence between their SAGD vs Lloydminster Thermals.
2030 target improvement for Lloydminster is 2.9 from 4.0.
No matter what they bolt on, its still far from ever improving to meet their equiv SAGD water intensity.
On paper today, the only answer is migration from steam injection to a CTI RFXL heating well in this case. Gets them to zero fresh water.