The article estimated the content of Canada's oil sands at "more than 170 billion barrels", giving it the third largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Perhaps influenced by the ongoing political discourse, I decided to do some fact-checking. The CIA's World Factbook agreed that Saudi Arabia had "proved reserves" of 262.6 billion barrels, Venezuela had 211.2 billion and Canada had 175.2 billion. In all, there were 1.477 trillion barrels of proved reserves in 99 countries. A great deal of oil. Good to see our trusty CIA is keeping its eye on the world's oil :)
How long might all this oil last? According to the original article, Canada is producing 1.5 million barrels a day. Dividing 175.2 billion by 1.5 million per day, then dividing the answer by 365 days/year suggests Canada's oil deposits would last 320 years. Quite a long time. But later in the article, it mentions ramping up Canadian production to 3.9 million barrels per day. This shortens its lifetime considerably - to a mere 123 years. Fact checking again, I see the CIA thinks Canada is already producing 3,483,000 barrels a day. At this rate they will run out in 137.8 years (give or take).
That got me thinking - is Canada going to run out before Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, selling off the last of the available oil at an enormous price, or is everyone else betting on oil going out of style earlier and rushing to produce. Fortunately for us, the CIA also publishes estimates on production. Calculating how long the proved reserves of 97 countries will last, at current production rates, reveals that the reserves of 38 of them will not last a decade (including the US and UK). The reserves of another 31 will be depleted within two decades. Saudi Arabia will last 12th longest, running out in 68.4 years, and Venezuela is #1, running out in 243.6 years. Canada is in 4th place, behind Venezuela, Ghana and Tajikistan, and just before Iran. Could there be a correlation betwen amount of reserves and how long they last (i.e. does production rate increase linearly with reserves?) See for yourself (below). Clearly most countries are shooting for < 50 years, and if increased demand encourages the laggards to increase production, perhaps the rest of the points will shift leftward, making Canada, Venezuela and the other countries with extensive reserves (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE) fall in line with Saudi Arabia. At that point, Canada will run out of oil sands in only ~40 years. Hope they save their money to deal with the effects of all that carbon dioxide. (Note: the author realizes these numbers, both proved reserves and production rates, have changed significantly over the years, usually upwards.)
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