A new estimate of marketable resources in Canada’s Montney Shale spanning Alberta and British Columbia suggests that the play holds enough gas to meet the entire country’s 2012 demand for well over a century.
“Total Canadian natural gas demand in 2012 was 88 billion m3 (3.1 Tcf), making the Montney gas resource equivalent to 145 years of Canada’s 2012 consumption,” says the report, The Ultimate Potential for Unconventional Petroleum from the Montney Formation of British Columbia and Alberta.
Source: The Ultimate Potential for Unconventional Petroleum from the Montney Formation of British Columbia and Alberta
The assessment estimates the formation’s ultimate unconventional potential, in terms of marketable resources, at 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 14,521 million barrels of natural gas liquids and 1.125 billion barrels of oil. The evaluation – the first such assessment of the Montney – was conducted by Canadian federal and provincial authorities, including federal oil and gas regulator the National Energy Board. “Marketable”, in this case, means “recoverable under foreseeable economic and technological conditions”.
This has had a dramatic impact on estimates of marketable gas in Canada’s Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. “By combining this marketable gas estimate with prior assessments, including the most recent estimates of western Canadian ultimate potential for conventional natural gas, the total ultimate potential in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) has more than doubled to 23,249 billion m3 (821 Tcf),” the report says, adding that just 632 tcf of that total remains after subtracting cumulative production through 2012.
And the Montney is just one of a handful of huge unconventional plays in western Canada, some of which – like the Liard Basin and the Duvernay Formation – have yet to be assessed, meaning that marketable resource estimates are likely to climb even higher.
The British Columbia side holds more of the gas and NGLs, and the Alberta side has more of the oil. But “the volume of marketable oil, which is almost entirely found in Alberta, remains highly uncertain”, the report warns. “This is because the areas that are richest in Montney unconventional oil tend to be in shallower areas, where uncertainty about development is much greater.”
Source: The Ultimate Potential for Unconventional Petroleum from the Montney Formation of British Columbia and Alberta
Source: The Ultimate Potential for Unconventional Petroleum from the Montney Formation of British Columbia and Alberta
Players in the Montney include ConocoPhillips, Shell and Encana. Encana is undergoing a reorganization that involves spinning off some of its Alberta assets, but its Montney wells will remain a top priority.
