Canada’s oil sands giants, Suncor and Imperial Oil, have become North America’s lowest-cost producers, a key transformation in the upstream landscape as shale producers struggle to break even with new wells as WTI prices still linger around $65-68 per barrel.
Whilst Alberta’s oil sands require substantial capital expenditures upfront, once the projects are online, operational costs can be greatly reduced by means of autonomous mining vehicles, smarter water management, and AI integration.
Oil sands saw their breakevens around $50-52 per barrel before the COVID-19 impact and subsequent wars and sanctions, but by now, most producers are profitable at around $41-43 per barrel.
New investments in Canada’s oil sands are relatively rare, especially now that most oil majors (BP, Chevron, TotalEnergies, and others) sold their assets in Alberta, but that is due to Canada’s restrictive carbon regulations.
Due to oil sands resembling mining more than usual oil extraction, the resource base of companies operating there is much larger – CNR, to take but one example, reports 43 years’ worth of production with 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves.
Donald Trump’s ambitious plans to resuscitate the United States’ once-dominant coal industry show no signs of materializing so far, as utility companies didn’t follow his battle cry.
