"Alberta's estimated oil reserves was raised from total conventional oil reserves of around 5 gigabarrels (billion barrels) to the much larger figure of around 180 gigabarrels by the inclusion of the Athabasca Oil Sands deposit by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (AEUB),[1] placing Canada second only to Saudi Arabia.[2] Other estimates (BP Statistical Review of World Energy) place Canada's petroleum reserves in the 17 gigabarrel range, by only counting oil sands under development. Although Alberta contains about 75% of Canadian conventional oil reserves, most of the other provinces and territories, especially Saskatchewan and offshore Newfoundland, hold significant production and reserves.[3]
Estimates of oil sands reserves can be difficult to understand because oil sands contain a semisolid form of oil known as bitumen. Companies only book oil sands as proven reserves after they finish a strip mine or thermal facility to extract them and an upgrader to convert them to synthetic crude oil (syncrude or SCO). On the other hand, the Alberta government bases its reserve estimates on drilling cores and wireline logs from 19,000 wells drilled in the oil sands. Alberta uses the term "crude bitumen" rather than "crude oil" and refers to "established reserves" rather than "proven reserves" to differentiate them from oil company estimates. These estimates did not attract much attention until the prestigious Oil and Gas Journal added them to its estimates of Canada's proven oil reserves, which quadrupled North American reserves. Alberta production and Canadian exports are steadily increasing even as Canada transitions into a mature basin much like the United States. The addition of unconventional reserves, with their correspondingly long production lifespans, cannot by themselves guarantee steadily increasing production rates, but they can guarantee stable production rates over a long period of time.
When oil prices were low, oil sands companies such as Suncor Energy and Syncrude reduced their costs to around US $15/bbl. As a result, the oil price increases of 2004-2006 to $50-60/bbl made oil sands production profitable enough to cause over $100 billion worth of oil sands projects to be planned and initiated. Alberta oil sands production in 2005 was around 0.4 gigabarrels per year. It is expected to rise to 0.7 gigabarrels per year or 67% of Albertan production by 2010. As of 2006, Canada was the only major OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) producer showing an oil production increase. The other major OECD producers (the United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Mexico) were all in decline. According to the Conference Board of Canada, total crude oil production in Canada is projected to increase by over 10 per cent in 2007, following an increase of 5 per cent in 2006. As a result of new nonconventional oil projects, total crude oil production is forecast to increase by an average of 8.6 per cent per year from 2008 to 2011.[4]"
Alberta could increase its production of synthetic crude by 2.5 times and we would still have 180 years of production ...
With that said I'm a firm believer we will never run out of oil. Over the next 20 years ecconomic development in China and India will result in each country consuming more energy than the entire world consumes today; overall energy needs will be 3 to 4 times what they currently are. At the same time there are practical limitations to the ammount of oil we can collect, produce and transport which prevent dramatically higher consumption of oil for energy.
What this means is that the cost of oil is going to continue to skyrocket for the future and other forms of energy are going to become more cost effective. initially Nuclear and Hydro Electric power will be used because they are far cheaper than other forms of energy production but take a long time to produce facilities and thus will not keep the price of energy from increasing; on top of that environmental conserns will limit the number of facilities that can be produced. The next stage will be Wind generation and then Solar power.
In 20 years you will start to see oil phased out for energy use and it will move towards being used exclusively for the production of plastics.
