GHG Fugitive Emission Quantification Using IDM

An innovative approach to greenhouse gases in Canada’s oil sands

Oil sands mining operations must quantify and report annual fugitive GHG emissions. Since 2015, a major oil sands producer has retained RWDI to conduct measurements of area fugitive emissions at their tailings pond and mine. Regulators and industry experts acknowledge the limitations of traditional measurement and quantification methodology. We proposed Inversion Dispersion Modeling (IDM) as a more effective approach to this challenge. The use of IDM to quantify fugitive emission sources has strong scientific and regulatory precedents. However, it was a first for the oil sands. This new approach was deemed successful and the results have been supporting regulatory reporting since 2015.