The Government of Alberta recently posted their 2021 fact sheet on key statistics regarding oil sands and conventional oil production.
As of last year, Alberta’s had an estimated 161.7 billion barrels remaining of its oil reserves, most of it (160.1 billion) being tied up in the oil sands.
In 2020, Alberta’s oil reserves amounted to 163.0 billion barrels.
For both years, Alberta combined reserves accounted for 9% of all the oil reserves in the world, which put it behind just Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
As far as oil production goes, Alberta produced 3.9 million barrels a day last year, up from just 3.6 million barrels in 2020.
Alberta’s oil production accounted for the vast majority of the production in Canada. There were 4,741,137 barrels produced in Canada a day last year, and Alberta was responsible for 81.9% of it. This is significantly more than the 80.4% it produced in 2020 and 80.5% in 2019.
Alberta’s usage of crude in 2021 was up from 2020 (484,137 bpd compared to 491,646 bpd) but still lower than in 2019 (550,948 bpd).
Exports, however, were up over both 2020 and 2019. Last year, 3,744,040 bpd of crude oil left Alberta, compared to 3,638,506 bpd and 3,475,047 bpd in 2020 and 2019, respectively. Alberta’s exports were up 8% last year compared to the year before and 2.9% over 2019.
Which is weird given that UCP politicians keep complaining that Justin Trudeau is preventing Alberta from exporting oil.
