OTTAWA: The growth in Canada’s heavy and light oil production by 2030 has been revised down 1.1 million b/d, primarily due to the near 50% drop in global prices in the past several months, a senior official at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said.
“Low prices seem to have taken a toll, and output by 2030 will now be 5.3 million b/d, compared with a forecast of 6.4 million b/d we made last June,” said Greg Stringham, CAPP’s vice president for oil sands and markets. “Over the shorter to medium term of five to 15 years, the pace of growth remains consistent. But then we see signs of a slowdown.”
His comments came after CAPP on Tuesday released its 2015 Crude Oil Forecast, Markets and Transportation annual report.
The most hit will be light oil producers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, several of whom have drilled wells but not completed them due to the current low prices and the unfavorable price differentials, Stringham said.
“They are under significant pressure to preserve their balance sheet and weather through the current low price environment,” he said.
Light oil output in Western Canada is forecast to decrease 26,000 b/d next year and stand at 747,000 b/d, compared with an anticipated 773,000 b/d in 2015 and 763,000 b/d in 2014, the CAPP report said.
OIL SANDS OUTPUT GROWTH
The scenario is different in the oil sands sector, Stringham said, where major producers like Imperial Oil, Cenovus, Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources are “feeding on existing production and relatively low operating cost.”
He did not disclose any statistics, but Paul Masschelin, Imperial’s senior vice president for finance and administration, said at an industry event in April that Imperial was maintaining a sustaining capital of C$5/barrel ($3.98/b) for the 40,000 b/d Nabiye oil sands project in Alberta.
“Those projects that were sanctioned prior to the oil price slump will still go ahead and we will see some C$23 billion of investments by the year end in Alberta’s oil sands sector,” Stringham said.
