Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
Fourty years ago Canada began producing crude bitumen from its oil sands. Today, the oil sands are a huge part of the Canadian economy and also one of the country’s biggest political debates.
The Motley Fool recently compiled a list of the some very interesting oil-sands statistics.
Here are a few of them, plus a few from MINING.com:
168 billion barrels
Canada hs 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil – 168 billion of these barrels are located in the oil sands
Source: Canadian Association of Petroleum ProducersAlberta oil sands | Creative Commons image by Howl Arts Collective
Greenhouse gas emissions
About 7% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions came from oilsands plants and upgraders in 2010.
Source: Pembina Institute
56% of accessible reserves
Only a fifth of the world’s oil reserves are accessible to private sector investment. Of that figure, 56% are found in Canada’s oil sands.
Source: The Motely Fool2012 World Proved Reserves | Map adapted from US Energy Information Administration
2.5 trips around the world
If laid end-to-end, Canada’s existing oil and natural gas pipelines would circle the earth 2.5 times. And yet this still isn’t enough capacity to accommodate the rapid growth of the oil sands. Midstream companies, like TransCanada, Kinder Morgan, and Enbridge, plan to add 3.1 million barrels of daily pipeline capacity – almost double today’s level – over the next decade just to keep up.
Source: The Motley Fool
1.6 million barrels
For every day in 2010, Alberta’s oil sands produced 1.6 million barrels of crude.
Source: Alberta government
If Alberta were a country …
If Alberta were a country, its per capita greenhouse gas emissions would be higher than any other country in the world.
Source: Pembina InstituteCanadian oil sands deposits | Image from Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
5 Comments
Hyrock
re: “For every day in 2010, Alberta’s oil sands produced 1.6 billion barrels of crude.”
This makes no sense…world production is only 20 million bbls/day. Someones must have been drinking oil when they made this up.
Get it Straight
1.6 MILLION Barrels Not Billion!!!!
Mike Tommasi
“Fourty” years ago?
“Canada hs [sic] 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil – 168 of these barrels are located in the oil sands” – that’s about 0.0000001%
The barrels are located in the oil sands? Or is it the oil?
blsmax
Here’s one you won’t hear from the Pembina Institute:
In 2011 Canada generated 67% of its electricity from renewable energy sources.
In the same year, the USA generated 13% of its electricity from renewables and they also used the dirtiest form of energy, burning coal, to generate 45% of their electricity. Canada’s electricity at the same time was 15% from coal. All of the countries in the world combine to generate less than 20% of electricity from renewables.
On a per capita basis, Canada ranks number one in the world in electricity generated from renewable sources and no other country even comes close.
methods3110
She’s a nice looking bunny but her English is up the creek.