The Great Canadian oil patch

Canada's established crude oil reserves, defined as our known deposits that can be profitably extracted under current economic and technological conditions, declined by more than half between 1976 and 1997.This can be attributed, however, to a diminishing rate of discovery rather than to an increasing rate of extraction. By contrast, established reserves of natural gas and crude bitumen (oil sands) increased over the same period, though this growth was accompanied by rapid increases in the rates of extraction as well.

The greatest promise for Canada's oil industry lies in the oil sands of northern Alberta, potentially one of the single greatest energy resources on earth. Estimates of the size of the deposit have been put as high as 2,500 billion barrels. Of this amount, 315 billion barrels are recoverable using current technology. Drilling in the oil sands currently extracts about 659,000 barrels per day equal to approximately 30% of Canada’s total oil production (2.2 million barrels per day).

	Oil rig Photo: Tyson Tolliver

The Arctic and the East Coast offshore basins are the newest hotbeds of petroleum exploration. Huge natural gas deposits have been discovered near Fort Liard in the Northwest Territories and, following the success of the massive Sable Island project, oil and natural gas exploration off the Nova Scotia coast has boomed. This frontier exploration boom has encountered pockets of resistance, however. The quest for potentially vast but unproven oil and gas deposits off the ecologically unique Queen Charlotte Islands on the West Coast has re-ignited an old debate. Many environmentalists oppose exploration in a region British Columbia ecologist Bristol Foster called the 'Galapagos of Canada.' Others, hurt by simultaneous downturns in the fishing and forestry industries, generally approve for economic reasons. At this point, a federal moratorium on drilling in the area remains.