It is difficult to draw comparisons on water usage among mining oil sands operators, as each project is at a different stage of maturity and uses different processes to produce different products - all factors which may affect their water usage. For example:

-       Some sites have upgraders and some do not; upgraders convert the bitumen to synthetic crude oil (SCO) using large quantities of steam or water. The higher the grade of SCO produced, the more water required.

-       Large quantities of water are temporarily lost in tailings; as tailings mature more of the water becomes available to be recycled into the bitumen extraction process so the operator requires less fresh water from the river. So, as a project matures its water use efficiency increases. Major mine expansions can be like starting new projects, and so the combined efficiency of expanding projects will be higher than the efficiency achieved by the mature mine.