oil sands

When oil demand vaporized, oil sands producers cut 300,000 B/D of production from wells using steam injection to produce bitumen. It is a huge test of something they have long been reluctant to do—turn down in-situ production when prices plunge.

For years Canadian heavy-oil production exceeded the volumes pipelines could handle.

Its reward for years of struggling to adapt to low prices and weak demand for its oil and gas has been an epic crash. Canadians selling change say it is time to consider possibilities that seemed inconceivable in the past.

The Alberta Energy Regulator has suspended a wide array of environmental monitoring requirements for oilsands companies over public health concerns raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So many unprecedented changes have occurred in the Canadian oil business that it is impossible to compare the current downturn to anything seen before.

TC Energy is planning to start mobilizing heavy construction equipment to worker campsites and pipeline storage sites in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska in February to start preconstruction work on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Heavy production spiked in two Canadian wells heated by an electric cable, but it is hard to find customers there at a time when Canadian oil prices and customers remember cables in the past that died young.

Devon Energy and its debt gets smaller, as Canadian Natural Resources adds to its huge, long-term bet on Canadian heavy and ultra-heavy crude.

The decision to ramp down production on the Aspen project comes months after the Alberta provincial government imposed production cuts to handle pipeline bottlenecks. Aspen is projected to produce 75,000 BOPD upon startup.

Imperial Oil has made a final investment decision on its 75,000-B/D Aspen oil sands project, the first new oil sands development to be approved in 5 years.