Exploration & Development
Canada is the world's third largest producer of natural gas and sixth largest producer of crude oil. Aggressive exploration and development play an important role in North America's energy supply - and only half of Canada's prospective conventional oil and gas resource base has been produced.
Both onshore and offshore, Canadian companies deal with the most extreme conditions on earth - frigid Arctic temperatures, icebergs, tundra, muskeg and mountain terrain. Such rugged conditions have led Canadian companies to develop advanced equipment, technologies and processes such as:
- Topographic and communications technologies for remote and inhospitable terrain
- Specialized vehicles for moving equipment and supplies over difficult terrain
- Rig transportation systems that are ranked first in the world for speed, expertise and safety
- Multi-functional marine vessels capable of operating in harsh weather during subsea construction, laying of pipelines or cables, and as support for divers
Enhanced recovery technologies have enabled Canadian companies to substantially increase recoveries of:
- crude oil (sweet, sour, heavy and ultra viscous)
- natural gas (sweet, sour, ultra sour)
- natural gas liquids
- bitumen (oil sands surface mining and well production)
Petroleum Investments
Canadian companies invest heavily in exploration, development and field equipment:
- More than $51 billion was spent in 2010 - $38 billion for oil sands development, and the remainder in conventional oil and gas, primarily in Western Canada.
- Over $111 million in work bids were tendered for oil and gas rights for offshore Newfoundland, and over $110 million in work bids were tendered in the Northwest Territories in 2010.
- In 2010, in Alberta oil sands capital expenditures were estimated to be $12 billion.
Upstream Technology
In the upstream sector, Canada offers industry-leading technologies such as:
- oil sands and heavy oil extraction
- steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD)
- light oil recovery
- ocean geomatics
- cold ocean-ice engineering
- 3-D and 4-D seismic
- software, logging and geo-steering
- advanced structural analysis techniques
- underwater moorings integrity verification
- telecommunications/data transmission
Drilling Expertise
Canada's advanced drilling technologies can tackle hard-to-access reservoirs and difficult production conditions. Horizontal drilling in western Canada for both oil and gas was at record levels in 2010. Close to 60 per cent of the wells drilled were oil and about 40 per cent were natural gas, a reversal of the long-term historical trend.
Canada's leading drilling technologies include:
- top drive drilling applications
- casing and coiled tubing drilling
- underbalanced, horizontal and directional drilling
- multiple-leg laterals
- lightweight fibreglass sucker rods
- measurement and logging while drilling
- offshore drilling modules and large drilling platforms
- automated service rigs
- a self-contained unit that can drill, do completions and workovers
