With New Technology Being Developed, Canada Could Soon Move to No. 1 in World Oil Reserves

Here's one more reason why Duke economist Mike Munger was correct when he wrote several years ago that "of all the idiotic things that people believe, the whole 'peak oil' thing has to be right up there."  Thanks to new, advanced oil recovery technologies currently being developed that would unlock Canada's vast oil sands deposits, our northern neighbor could soon surpass Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to become the No. 1 country in the world for oil reserves.  From a July 24 article in the WSJ:

"Ten years ago, new oil field technologies unlocked vast crude supplies from western Canada's oil-sands deposits, propelling America's northern neighbor to the top echelon of the world's petroleum repositories.

Now oil companies here are experimenting with technologies that could unlock even more reserves from what is some of the world's heaviest and stickiest petroleum. The new technologies could also drive down the cost of producing oil in Canada.

One consortium aims to get oil flowing to the surface by sending radio waves from huge antennae pushed through wells deep underground—adopting technology first developed for the U.S. government to eavesdrop on underground bunkers.

Another company is working on inserting electrical heating coils into wells to melt the oil, while other firms are tinkering with petroleum-based solvents they hope to pump into wells to get more oil out.

All the experimentation is aimed at improving a standard method of oil-sands extraction: so-called steam-assisted gravity drainage, or SAGD.

SAGD quintupled the amount of bitumen that may be possible to recover in Canada, and helped lift Canada's overall recoverable oil reserves to No. 3 in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

But those reserves are only a 10th of the 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen found in Canada. Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board estimates there are also more than 400 billion barrels of bitumen trapped in carbonate rock formations in Alberta, mostly in a large formation called the Grosmont that stretches across the center of the province.

"If we postulated that 25% of that can be recovered, Canada could move to No. 1" in world oil reserves, said Glen Schmidt, chief executive of privately owned Calgary energy-technology company Laricina Energy Ltd."

Related: Watch a WSJ video here that accompanies the article.