U.S. boom in oil production spells peril for Canadian crude

A torrent of oil pumped from new wells across the U.S. is setting in motion a decade of dramatic change that promises to wean the country off OPEC, and threatens the growth of energy imports from Canada. The U.S. is now staring at an energy future awash with its own crude, with far-reaching consequences for Canada’s oil sands, the U.S. economy and global geopolitics. This massive shift has been sparked by changing political sentiment and technological advances that have allowed crude to be tapped in new places – from North Dakota to Oklahoma, Colorado, Michigan, and even Florida. The United States, according to new data released Monday by Bentek, a U.S. energy analysis firm, will see its oil production rise nearly five million barrels a day, or 74 per cent, in the next decade. In that time, reliance on countries outside Canada will largely disappear. The U.S. today imports 45 per cent of its petroleum, half from OPEC countries. But by 2022, Bentek projects, only a million barrels per day will be delivered to U.S. shores by tanker – down from 6.7 million in 2011 and just 5 per cent of total demand – and at least some of those won’t come from OPEC, but from countries like Mexico and Brazil. The coming change, according to Bentek, is startling: By 2016, the U.S. will surpass its 1970 oil production peak of 9.6 million barrels a day; by 2022, it will have leapt to 11.6 million barrels a day...more