Design of an Oil Waste Land Treatment Facility for the Cold Lake Production Project

Esso Resources Canada Ltd (Esso) operates an oil sands production project at
Cold Lake, Alberta that produces approximately 14,000 m3/day of bitumen for
the world market. On December 8, 1988 a failure on observation well C7-13
created an oil spill of about 1000 m3 of bitumen and 2600m3 of produced
water. The bitumen spill .and resultant seepage contaminated an area of
muskeg of about 1 ha in area~ The contaminated material was removed from the
site during the winter and stockpiled pending a decision on the disposal option.
Esso later developed and began the operation of a Land Treatment Facility
(L TF) on this site to dispose of the 3600 m3 of bitumen and produced water
contaminated muskeg. Several disposal options were evaluated on the basis
of environmental, operational, and cost factors, and it was concluded that land
treatment offered the most environmentally sound and cost effective disposal
option.
Land treatment is a disposal process applied to waste oily sludges from
petroleum refining (Huddleston, 1979). The activity of soil microorganisms
along with physical and chemical processes, is utilized in degrading,
transforming, and immobilizing the hydrocarbon components of the sludges.