|
Alberta oil sands boost North American reserves
Gary Park, PNA Canadian correspondent
North America’s share of the world’s oil reserves rocketed to 18 percent last year from 5 percent in 2001, for one reason — the vast oil sands reserves of northern Alberta. Now that the sprawling resource has been officially added to the global energy mix, Cambridge Energy Research Associates said Canada’s oil reserves alone rose to 180 billion barrels from 5.6 billion barrels and helped push the world tally up by 18 percent to 1.213 trillion barrels.
CERA’s Global Oil Trends 2003 report, released Feb. 12, joined the industry publication Oil & Gas Journal in factoring the oil sands into total world reserves and several other reputable organizations are moving in that direction.
Alberta Energy Minister Murray Smith mounted an aggressive campaign last May to get recognition for the oil sands from the International Energy Agency and the International Petroleum Agency.
He said the estimated total of 175 billion barrels of recoverable bitumen using existing technology “is so critical to North American energy and supply that (the IEA and IPA) have to include these reserves in their calculations.” Bitumen reserves could be 315 billion barrels The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board believes future projected development using rapidly emerging new technology will boost the bitumen reserves to 315 billion barrels, with CERA forecasting that the oil sands sector could expand five-fold to 5 million barrels per day.
CERA said Canada, along with Russia and Brazil, led the way in raising non-OPEC output by 1.1 million barrels per day last year.
OPEC production declined by 1.9 million barrels per day as the cartel cut back on the flow from member countries.
World-wide consumption grew by a mere 20,000 barrels per day to 76.7 million barrels per day, the smallest gain since 1983.
The U.S. dependency on Canadian oil was captured in National Energy Board statistics for 2002, which showed 62 percent of Canada’s production was shipped south of the 49th parallel.
Exports averaged 1.45 million barrels per day to the end of November, up 4 percent from 2001, with the gains coming from synthetic and bitumen output in northern Alberta and crude from Newfoundland’s Hibernia and Terra Nova offshore fields.
Heavy crude exports surged past 1 million barrels per day from 827,058 barrels per day in January, but light crude exports also climbed to an 11-month average of 539,500 barrels per day, up 6.5 percent from the previous year and close to peak levels in 2000.
| 