Wednesday, January 25, 2012

More on oil and gas - this time the North

Oil has been produced in Norman Wells on the Mackenzie since the 1920s and is now connected to Alberta via a pipeline.  The field produces about 5-6 million barrels of oil per year.

The estimate is that the Northwest Territories have long term recoverable oil reserves of between 1.5 billion and 5 billion barrels of oil.   The estimate of probable natural gas reserves in the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea is 1.7 trillion cubic meters, though gas hydrates may more than double that.  These are larger gas deposits than the total reserves Canada currently has.   With the construction of the Mackenzie valley gas pipeline, these gas deposits become reserves.

If we go further north, the deposits are ever larger.   The Sverdrup Basin is estimated to contain 3-7 billion barrels of conventional oil and 1.3- 3.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.   In the Canadian waters between Nunavut and  Kalaallisut (Greenland) are estimated at 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 700 billion cubic meters of natural gas.  The Baffin Bay reserves make it clear why Denmark and Canada care about Hans Island.   The Inuit of Kalaallisut are actively encouraging oil and gas development.

 I can not find estimates for Davis Strait or Hudson's Bay, both of which should have oil and gas.

Finally, there is the oil on Melville Island which is located in on the western edge of the Canadian arctic archipelago.  In the early 1960s it was discovered to have oil and gas, most significantly a large deposit of tar sands.   In 1966 the estimate was that these tar sands contained 100,000,000,000 barrels of oil.   I can not find more recent estimates of the size of the deposit.   This oil is currently not considered recoverable, but with all the natural gas on hand in the Sverup basin, it may not be as unrealistic as one might think with rising oil prices.  

The potential for a large scale oil and gas industry in the arctic is a realistic future.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A Vancouver company is working with Vanadium. Vanadium is used to strengthen steel. They found Vanadium is, an excellent storage for renewable energy.

China has an abundance of Vanadium. They fully intend to use Vanadium for their renewable energy.

Hopefully, Vanadium will be put to work, before Harper poisons the entire planet, with the dirtiest energy in the world...The dirty tar sands oil.

Bernard said...

The federal government does not control natural resources, it is not their role to decide on projects or production.

Meanwhile, the tar sands oil is still better than coal. Coal is by far the number one new source of electrical power in the world. China and India are relying on coal fired power for their new electrical power.

From 2004 to 2010 China doubled their coal production. In six years China's domestic coal production alone added 4,000,000,000,000 kg of new CO2 emissions per year. - 8 times the total CO2 emitted by Canada.

Tim said...

One exception I'll make to your statement Bernard is the Federal govt DOES control natural resources in the offshore areas and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. However, in offshore areas where their have been actual discoveries and intent to produce the Federal government has signed accords with the abutting provinces to share jurisdiction. Currently this is done through the Canada Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board(CNSOPB) and the Canada Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board(CNLOPB). There is also an agreement between the Federal government and Quebec to start a new Canada Quebec Offshore Petroleum Board to manage offshore resources in Gulf of St Lawrence once actually exploration begins(Interestingly Quebec basically accepted the same terms the Federal Government offered to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. How very un-Quebec of them)
One recent piece of news on this front is Canada/Nova Scotia just signed a substantial exploration deal with Shell to explore several deepwater fields about 200km south of Halifax. What I think is more interesting from a Canada US relations standpoint is the newest agreement extends extending exploration activity much further south from where it historically existed around Sable Island and much closer to the US Canada maratime boundary. The next frontier so to speak now in Atlantic Canada is opening George's Bank which is 150 to 200 miles due east of Boston(and much shallower water than existing drilling) and split into Canadian and American sectors. Currently the US has an indefinate moratium on development(as they due along the entire US East Coast) while Canada/Nova Scotia has a moratium scheduled to expire in 2015. I believe this recent agreement makes the opening of George's Bank more likely in 2015(Nova Scotia will easily become addicted to natural resource revenues especially as a way of reducing their high personal and corporate income taxes to be fair like a lot of provinces including BC) and given Boston and Massachusetts are not known to be an oil and gas "friendly" area I suspect their will be some rather interesting discussion between Ottawa and Washington.