Oil reserves in Canada

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Oil reserves in Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
's proven oil reserves were estimated at in 2007. This figure includes oil sands reserves which are estimated by government regulators to be economically producible at current prices using current technology.

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Canada

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south....
. Over 95% of these reserves are in the oil sands deposits in the province of Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is one of Canada Canadian Prairies Provinces and territories of Canada. It became a province on September 1, 1905.Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S....
. Alberta contains nearly all of Canada's oil sands and much of its conventional oil reserves. The balance is concentrated in several other provinces and territories. Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie provinces in Canada, which has an area of 588,276.09 square kilometres and a population of 1,015,895 , mostly living in the southern half of the province....
and offshore areas of Newfoundland

Newfoundland and Labrador

Newfoundland and Labrador is a Provinces and territories of Canada of Canada, on the country's Atlantic Ocean coast in northeastern North America....
in particular have substantial oil production and reserves. Alberta has 39% of Canada's remaining conventional oil reserves, Saskatchewan 27% and offshore Newfoundland 28%, but if oil sands are included, Alberta's share is over 98%.

Canada has a highly sophisticated energy industry and is both an importer and exporter of oil and refined products. In 2006, in addition to producing , Canada imported , consumed itself, and exported to the U.S. The excess of exports over imports was . Over 99% of Canadian oil exports are sent to the United States, and Canada is the United States' largest supplier of oil.

The decision of accounting of the Alberta oil sands deposits as proven reserves was made by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (AEUB), now known as the Energy Resources Conservation Board

Energy Resources Conservation Board

The Energy Resources Conservation Board is an independent, quasi-judicial agency of the Government of Alberta. It regulates the safe, responsible, and efficient development of Alberta's energy resources: oil, natural gas, Tar sands, coal, and pipelines....
(ERCB). Although now widely accepted, this addition was controversial at the time because oil sands contain an extremely heavy form of crude oil known as bitumen

Bitumen

Bitumen is a mixture of organic compounds liquids that are highly viscous, black, sticky, entirely soluble in carbon disulfide, and composed primarily of highly condensed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons....
which will not flow toward a well under reservoir conditions. Instead, it must be mined, heated, or diluted with solvents to allow it to be produced, and must be upgraded to lighter oil to be usable by refineries.. Historically known as bituminous sands or sometimes as "tar sands", the deposits were exposed as major rivers cut through the oil-bearing formations to reveal the bitumen in the river banks. In recent years technological breakthroughs have overcome the economical and technical difficulties of producing the oil sands, and by 2007 64% of Alberta's petroleum production of was from oil sands rather than conventional oil fields. The ERCB estimates that by 2017 oil sands production will make up 88% of Alberta's predicted oil production of .

Analysts estimate that a price of $30 to $40 per barrel is required to make new oil sands production profitable. In recent years prices have greatly exceeded those levels and the Alberta government expects $116 billion worth of new oil sands projects to be undertaken between 2008 and 2017. However the biggest constraint on oil sands development is a serious labor and housing shortage in Alberta as a whole and the oil sands center of Fort McMurray in particular. According to Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada is the Canada federal government department commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture....
, by September, 2006 unemployment rates in Alberta had fallen to record low levels and per-capita incomes had risen to double the Canadian average. Another hurdle has been Canada's capacity to rapidly increase its export pipelines. The National Energy Board indicated that exporters faced pipeline apportionment

Apportionment

The legal term apportionment means distribution or allotment in proper shares.It is a term used in law in a variety of senses. Sometimes it is employed roughly and has no technical meaning; this indicates the distribution of a benefit , or liability , or the incidence of a duty ....
in 2007. However, surging crude oil prices sparked a jump in applications for oil pipelines in 2007, and new pipelines were planned to carry Canadian oil as far south as U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Canada is the only major oil producer in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to have an increase in oil production in recent years. Production in the other major OECD producers (the United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Mexico) have been declining, as has conventional oil production in Canada. But total crude oil production in Canada was projected to increase by an average of 8.6 percent per year from 2008 to 2011 as a result of new non-conventional oil projects.