CALGARY – Forget herding cats. The head of the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance says getting 13 oilsands firms to share technology with each other is more like herding lions and tigers.
But Dan Wicklum says COSIA has made some progress since it was formally launched 21 months ago — though there’s still a ways to go.
Since COSIA’s inception, Wicklum says 560 technologies that collectively cost $900 million to develop have been shared amongst Canada’s biggest oilsands players and that 185 projects are currently in various stages of development.
He says one of the most difficult parts was drawing up legal agreements from scratch that would enable the companies to contribute their technologies without running into intellectual property concerns.
COSIA members have laid out some broad aspirational goals related to four priority areas: land, water, greenhouse gases and tailings.
But the alliance has not yet set firm targets in those areas or a firm timeline by which members plan to meet those goals.