Second Wallace E. Pratt Conference “Petroleum Provinces of the 21st Century” Petroleum Provinces of Canada for the 21st Century 1

Remaining reserves of marketable crude oil and natural gas in Canada are in excess of 1.43 x 109 m3 (9 billion barrels) and 1.84 x 1012 m3 (65 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). These reserves enable current annual extraction rates of 127 x 106 m3 (800 million barrels) of oil and 170 x 109m3 (6 Tcf) of natural gas, mainly from the mature Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. In the next millennium, expanded contributions to production capacity will come initially from the Mesozoic Jeanne d’Arc Basin (e.g. Hibernia & Terra Nova oil) offshore Newfoundland and basins off Nova Scotia (e.g. Sable Island gas). In northern Alberta, additional investment in exploiting the Cretaceous oil sands will enhance the production of upgraded (synthetic) crude oil, bitumen and heavy oil. Notwithstanding the technical and commercial challenges, predictions of remaining exploitable resources in accessible areas exceed 5.6 x 1012 m3 (200 Tcf) of gas and 16 x 109 m3 (100 billion barrels) of bitu-men. In addition to oil sands, tight gas and coalbed methane in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, sig-nificant undeveloped resources are known in the remote Canadian Arctic islands (Sverdrup Basin), the Labrador shelf (gas) and the Beaufort Basin (gas and oil). Many of these resources will remain “orphaned”, depending on environmental aspects, delivery costs, markets and commodity price. Current “stranded gas ” in the Mackenzie Delta and the shallow offshore waters of the Beaufort Sea could be connected (via the Mackenzie Valley corridor) to the natural gas pipeline grid serving domestic and United States markets. Associated gas reserves (presently re-injected at Hibernia) in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin, if not connected to shore by pipeline, may be developed using either natural gas to liquid conversion or compressed gas transport tech-nologies