Unsustainable

A new Natural Resources Canada report suggests that current Canadian petroleum reserves are substantially less than usually assumed - but that even at a lower production level than projected by the industry, petroleum production will singlehandedly cause a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions:

Canada's natural gas exports to the United States will fall by nearly two-thirds by 2020 as new unconventional sources fail to offset declining production in Alberta and rising domestic demand, a new study from Natural Resources Canada suggests.

Meanwhile, the country will have to rely on expensive and heavily polluting oil sand projects to provide as much as 80 per cent of its oil production, up from 40 per cent currently, according to a department report, entitled Canada's Energy Outlook, which was released yesterday...

The government analysts have projected that Canada's natural gas production will peak at 6.6 trillion cubic feet a year by 2011, and then it will decrease, although they expect the decline will be partly offset by the production of coal-bed methane and gas from the Mackenzie Delta.

Still, with rising domestic demand, the energy outlook says net exports of natural gas will drop to 1.3 trillion cubic feet in 2020 from 3.7 tcf this year...

The analysts are also less bullish on oil sands production than is CAPP, which forecasts that capacity to reach four million barrels a day by 2020.

The NRCan report says it will be 2.9 million barrels, which would still represent 80 per cent of total Canadian oil output...

Under the NRCan scenario, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions would climb to 828 megatonnes in 2010 -- 253 megatonnes above the country's Kyoto commitments -- and would rise to 897 megatonnes in 2020. Nearly 60 per cent of that increase is expected to occur in the oil sector, primarily from producing and refining the bitumen from the oil sands.

It's worth noting that the article (and by association the report) doesn't seem to tackle the question of whether Canada will even be able to reduce natural gas exports under NAFTA. But one way or the other, it seems rather plain that some of Canada's resource industries aren't far away from dying out.

The only rational response would be to recognize the need to use what's left of our dwindling oil resources to help fund a move to more sustainable energy sources. The question now is whether the Cons will ignore the report (and perhaps declare research to be beyond the mandate of NRC), or take seriously the likelihood that the oil industry is less sustainable both economically and environmentally than its proponents would like to admit.