Future Delivery Patterns for Alberta Gas
Authors: Potter Andrew E. , Liddle Robert T. 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the 47th Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in San, Antonio, Tex., Oct. 8–11, 1972 Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon requested to the Editor of the appropriate journal, provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers Office. Such discussions may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

A projection is made of gas production in Alberta from now until 1986, giving production in Alberta from now until 1986, giving consideration to estimated ultimate reserves, finding trends, provincial and federal regulation with respect to gas export, deliverability of fields presently serving export market buyer's take or pay limitations and the need to provide a reasonable life for pipeline facilities. Ultimate reserves are estimated by a method of extrapolating, for different areas within the Province, the trend of reserves discovered per mile of exploratory drilling to an estimated ultimate drilling density (cubic miles of favorable sediment divided by miles of exploratory drilling. The ultimate gas reserves of Alberta are estimated to be 134 Tcf. It is concluded that for the period to 1986 production will not be limited by ultimate production will not be limited by ultimate reserves but by the other factors involved. Production is projected to peak out in the Production is projected to peak out in the early 1980's at slightly less than 3 Tcf per year. Gas will be available to take care of Canadian market growth until about 1979, but it is predicted that future exports to the U.S. based on Alberta reserves (other than under existing licenses) will be under relatively short term National Energy Board licenses.

Introduction

Although the authors wish to make the customary disclaimers with regard to belief in being able to forecast the future, we believe that there are several limits to the possible future patterns of gas deliveries from Alberta that can be usefully discussed. One obvious limit is the ultimate reserve of gas which eventually will be discovered and produced. The authors believe that the produced. The authors believe that the ultimate gas reserves of Alberta are somewhat larger than some other published estimate, and an estimate of ultimate gas reserves for Alberta is included in the Appendix. However, in the near term, it seems to us that the limits will not be provided by the size of the ultimate reserve. The other limits are the discovery and development rate, political policy and the economics of production and transportation. These production and transportation. These factors are, of course, interrelated.