North America’s Next Big Shale Play
The oil price crash of 2014 not only weighed on Canada’s oil sands industry, but it also directed more company investment into shorter-cycle shale projects in the U.S. at the expense of more capital- and energy-intensive oil sands production in Canada.
While the oil sands will continue to be a growth story thanks to investments made before the downturn, Canadian energy officials and many oil companies — both Canada-based and supermajors — are increasingly looking to explore and drill in the two largest shale formations, Duvernay and Montney, estimated to hold billions of barrels of light tight oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas.
Currently, Canada’s shale oil production is around 335,000 bpd, according to estimates by energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, quoted by Reuters. This is some 8 percent of total Canadian production, which the National Energy Board (NEB) says was nearly 4.2 million bpd in 2017. Wood Mackenzie expects shale oil production to rise to 420,000 bpd in a decade.
Some two-thirds of Canada’s oil production comes from oil sands. In 2017, Canadian oil sands production is expected to have exceeded 2.6 million bpd, according to IHS Markit. Production is expected to continue to grow, thanks to investments made prior to the oil price crash, while future investment is “to remain lower than historical levels”, the data and analysis provider said in a report earlier this week.
Investment in new oil sands production capacity has dropped by two-thirds since the oil price crash — from more than $30 billion to just over $10 billion estimated for 2017 — and may fall further this year before starting to recover, IHS Markit says.
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