I think that’s mostly that Canada has shitty tar sands and such and Saudi Arabia has sweet crude and such. And, if that’s the case, really the world would be better off if, while it is working as fast as possible to get off of fossil fuels, it used the easier stuff in SA.
And…Holy Shit!
My understanding is Canada’s oil needs a lot of refinement because it is really dirty, but subsequently it can be used for specialty oil products that the cleaner, cheaper Saudi stuff can’t.
wtf is going on here and why are the USA and Canadia producing oil?
Subsidies
Not sure what dirty means. It is sour which means it has H2S that has to be removed.
Yeah, and sanctions. $20 to produce a barrel in Venezuela and $18 in Russia, while it’s $90 in Canadia and $57 in the USA? (barrel of oil now goes for $72)
(but $3 in SA. No wonder they are rich with oil and USA and Canada aren’t.)
Interesting articles.
Oil absolutely does not cost $90 a barrel to produce in Canada. This table is ludicrous.
Well, 'splain it. It’s not like knoema is some commie propaganda site. It’s a data thing and the stats are from the US Energy Information Administration, Joint Organisations Data Initiative, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Probably the first thing would be how it says marginal, like the ones before the next one were cheaper
I get that “marginal production cost” is not the same as production cost generally, but this data is pretty startling.
Sure, but why is it 30x higher in Canada than Saudi Arabia?
Googling I am seeing all kinds of costs from like 40-90. It’s all over the place. Has to be a “what is being measured” issue I think. Maybe some are including externalities.
A living wage and the cost of regulation would play a big role.
A WSJ piece is saying
Saudi Arabian crude is some of the cheapest in the world to extract because of its location near the surface of the desert and the size of the fields. That makes transporting those barrels an outsized piece of its costs, on a percentage basis, compared with countries where production costs are 10 to 20 times as high.
No labor costs in Saudi Arabia?
Jk
But yeah I think the point that it is mind blowingly cheaper in SA is confirmed and the opposite of ludicrous, regardless of the specific numbers
Sweet and no fracking required is way less intensive a process than sour and needs fracking
And Canada with “some of the industry’s highest capital costs and longest development timelines”.
Most production growth in Canada comes from oil sands deposits in the remote boreal forests of northern Alberta, which have some of the industry’s highest capital costs and longest development timelines. Canada’s oil sands represent the third largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but its crude trades at a substantial discount to other North American grades due to its low quality and limited pipeline access to market. Canada also produces declining amounts of crude oil from conventional, shale and deepwater Atlantic wells.
That makes sense. I’ve never worked there so don’t know too much about their production.
SA pays every citizen a living wage with their oil money AFAICT
I’m not sure if oil workers are citizens though
And there must be SOME regulation considering how much greener they are than Canada. Although a lot of it is probably just natural advantages
But I think SA is extremely investing in clean/green/whatever R&D given how correctly scared they are of when their oil runs out or becomes worth a lot less
