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Canada's oil sand will not prevent Peak Oil
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Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group,
Uppsala University
, Sweden, has made a study of a crash program scenario for the Canadian Oil
Sand Industry. Even in a very optimistic scenario Canada’s oil sands will
not prevent Peak Oil. If a crash program were immediately implemented it
may only barely offset the combined declining conventional crude oil production
in Canada and the North Sea. The article is accepted by magazine Energy Policy.
Read the full article
or the abstract below. Conyact: Kjell Aleklett,
aleklett@tsl.uu.se
.
A Crash Program Scenario for the Canadian Oil Sands
Industry
Bengt Söderbergh, Fredrik Robelius and Kjell Aleklett
Accepted by Energy Policy
Abstract
The report Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk
Management, by Robert L. Hirsch et al., concludes that Peak Oil is going
to happen and that worldwide large-scale mitigation efforts are necessary
to avoid its possible devastating effects for the world economy. These efforts
include accelerated production, referred to as crash program production,
from Canada’s oil sands. The objective of this article is to investigate
and analyse what production levels that might be reasonable to expect from
a crash program for the Canadian oil sands industry, within the time frame
2006-2018 and 2006-2050. The implementation of a crash program for the Canadian
oil sands industry is associated with serious difficulties. There is not
a large enough supply of natural gas to support a future Canadian oil sands
industry with today’s dependence on natural gas. It is possible to use bitumen
as fuel and for upgrading, although it seems to be incompatible with Canada’s
obligations under the Kyoto treaty. For practical long-term high production,
Canada must construct nuclear facilities to generate energy for the in situ
projects. Even in a very optimistic scenario Canada’s oil sands will not
prevent Peak Oil. A short-term crash program from the Canadian oil sands
industry achieves about 3.6 mb/d by 2018. A long-term Crash program results
in a production of approximately 5 mb/d by 2030.
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Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group
From left:
Fredrik Robelius
Kjell Aleklett
Bengt Söderbergh
(Print size photo
)
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