Minister McKenna talks to one business about clean-tech in the oil and gas sector. HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA (Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada): Okay, so David, you have this really amazing idea with titanium, so tell me about it. DAVID: Here it is. This is the waste that you find about 20 metres under a tailings pond. It’s called mature fine tailings. It’s got clay, it’s got solvent, it’s bitumen, it’s got fines which can’t agromerate – it means the ponds won’t go away. HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA: So people don’t generally think good things about tailings ponds. DAVID: They don’t. HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA: Right. DAVID: It’s a problem for the industry (inaudible). What we do is we clean out the bitumen and we re-sell it. That can generate about $80 million. We get the solvent – we recover it – we sell that. That can get 20 to 30 million. And then we capture the heavy minerals. Zircon – your bathtub, your toilet will be made with zircon. And titanium, it’ll be in paper and toothpaste. We recover these valuable products. We sell them. But we also then by cleaning the tailings, we help the industry shrink its ponds. HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA: So this is amazing. So if you’re in the oil sands – you’re a company in the oil sands – you can also use your tailings and make money off them? DAVID: This is what we believe and that’s what we’ve been marketing to them, and we think most of them will ultimately adopt this technology. HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA: So the environment and the economy go together! DAVID: They do! HON. CATHERINE MCKENNA: That’s great! Thank you.

Be the first to comment