Energy
New Report Reveals Just How Energy Rich America Really Is
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/05/tvrd-dc-energy-oil-gas-pumpjack-image-2024-05-17.jpg)
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit dedicated to the study of the impact of government regulation on global energy resources, finds that U.S. inventories of oil and natural gas have experienced stunning growth since 2011.
The same report, the North American Energy Inventory 2024, finds the United States also leading the world in coal resources, with total proven resources that are more than 53% bigger than China’s.
Despite years of record production levels and almost a decade of curtailed investment in the finding and development of new reserves forced by government regulation and discrimination by ESG-focused investment houses, America’s technically recoverable resource in oil grew by 15% from 2011 to 2024. Now standing at 1.66 trillion barrels, the U.S. resource is 5.6 times the proved reserves held by Saudi Arabia.
The story for natural gas is even more amazing: IER finds the technically recoverable resource for gas expanded by 47% in just 13 years, to a total of 4.03 quadrillion cubic feet. At current US consumption rates, that’s enough gas to supply the country’s needs for 130 years.
“The 2024 North American Energy Inventory makes it clear that we have ample reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal that will sustain us for generations,” Tom Pyle, President at IER, said in a release. “Technological advancements in the production process, along with our unique system of private ownership, have propelled the U.S. to global leadership in oil and natural gas production, fostering economic benefits like lower energy prices, job growth, enhanced national security, and an improved environment.”
It is key to understand here that the “technically recoverable” resource measure used in financial reporting is designed solely to create a point-in-time estimate of the amount of oil and gas in place underground that can be produced with current technology. Because technology advances in the oil and gas business every day, just as it does in society at large, this measure almost always is a vast understatement of the amount of resource that will ultimately be produced.
The Permian Basin has provided a great example of this phenomenon. Just over the past decade, the deployment of steadily advancing drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies has enabled producers in that vast resource play to more than double expected recoveries from each new well drilled. Similar advances have been experienced in the other major shale plays throughout North America. As a result, the U.S. industry has been able to consistently raise record overall production levels of both oil and gas despite an active rig count that has fallen by over 30% since January 2023.
In its report, IER notes this aspect of the industry by pointing out that, while the technically recoverable resource for U.S. natural gas sits at an impressive 4.03 quads, the total gas resource in place underground is currently estimated at an overwhelming 65 quads. If just half of that resource in place eventually becomes recoverable thanks to advancing technology over the coming decades, that would mean the United States will enjoy more than 1,000 years of gas supply at current consumption levels. That is not a typo.
Where coal is concerned, IER finds the US is home to a world-leading 470 billion short tons of the most energy-dense fossil fuel in place. That equates to 912 years of supply at current consumption rates.
No other country on Earth can come close to rivaling the U.S. for this level of wealth in energy mineral resources, and few countries’ governments would dream of squandering them in pursuit of a political agenda driven by climate fearmongering. “And yet, many politicians, government agents, and activists seek to constrain North America’s energy potential,” Pyle says, adding, “We must resist these efforts and commit ourselves to unlocking these resources so that American families can continue to enjoy the real and meaningful benefits our energy production offers.”
With President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump staking out polar opposite positions on this crucial question, America’s energy future is truly on the ballot this November.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Energy
BC should revisit nuclear energy to address BC Hydro shortages
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/tvrd-rw-nuclear-power-station-image-2024-09-03.jpg)
From Resource Works
The short-term costs of nuclear SMRs are preferable to paying hundreds of millions to import foreign energy in the long-term.
British Columbia takes great pride in its tremendous hydroelectric resources, which result from the province’s many long, powerful rivers. For decades, BC has found it easy to rely on hydroelectricity as a clean, renewable source of power for homes, industry, and businesses.
However, the ongoing viability of hydropower in BC should be called into question due to worsening summer droughts and declining snowfalls, which have negatively impacted the annual supply of hydropower. BC has not seriously entertained the possibility of alternatives, even though other provinces have begun to embrace one particular source of energy that has been illegal here for over a decade: nuclear power.
By refusing to strike down the law passed in 2010 that prohibits the mining of uranium or the building of nuclear reactors, BC has made itself an outlier among its peers. Since last year, Ontario has announced plans to expand its existing nuclear capacity, which already provides the majority of the province’s electricity.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia have also begun to explore the possibility of expanding nuclear power to help power their growing provinces. BC has prohibited nuclear energy since passing the Clean Energy Act of 2010, which bans the building of reactors or mining uranium.
This prohibition is a barrier to diversifying BC’s energy supply, which has become more reliant on foreign energy. Due to energy shortages, BC Hydro had to import 15 to 20 percent of the energy required to meet the province’s needs.
Do not expect the situation to improve. Snowpacks are shrinking in the winter months, and summer droughts have become more frequent, which means BC’s dams will see a reduction in their power capacity. Power shortages may be on the horizon, leading to vastly more expensive purchases of foreign energy to meet BC’s growing electricity demand, driven by the construction of new homes and projects like LNG facilities on the coast.
Energy diversification is the solution, and nuclear power should be included, especially Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Low-carbon and reliable, SMRs can provide steady nuclear power in any season. They are flexible and much more cost-effective than traditional, large-scale nuclear reactors.
For a vast province like BC, filled with small communities separated by mountainous terrain, SMRs can be deployed with great ease to ensure energy stability in remote and Indigenous communities that still struggle with energy access. The Haida Nation, for example, is still reliant on diesel to supply its energy, which goes against the BC government’s clean energy goals and relies on fuel being shipped to the Haida Gwaii archipelago.
While SMRs are cheaper than massive nuclear reactors, they are still expensive and require strict safety regulations due to the ever-present risks associated with nuclear energy. However, is the cost of building nuclear facilities in the short term more expensive than importing energy for years to come?
In 2023, BC Hydro spent upwards of $300 million USD on imported energy, while the cost of the smallest SMR is $50 million, with the more expensive units costing up to $3 billion. Building SMRs now is the right decision from a cost-benefit perspective and in terms of BC’s clean energy goals because SMRs guarantee low-emitting energy, unlike imported energy.
The Clean Energy Act stands in the way of nuclear power’s emergence in BC. Amending it will be necessary for that to change.
BC is not going to need any less energy going forward.
It is high time to get over old fears and stereotypes of nuclear energy. Hydroelectricity need not be displaced as the cornerstone of BC’s energy supply, but it alone cannot face the challenges of the future.
Alberta
AI-driven data centre energy boom ‘open for business’ in Alberta
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/08/tvrd-cec-alberta-data-centres-image-2024-08-29.jpg)
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Deborah Jaremko and Will Gibson“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas”
Data centres – the industrial-scale technology complexes powering the world’s growing boom in artificial intelligence – require reliable, continuous energy. And a lot of it.
“Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing in energy, dominating discussions at all levels in companies, banks, investment funds and governments,” says Simon Flowers, chief analyst with energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the power required globally by data centres could double in the next 18 months. It’s not surprising given a search query using AI consumes up to 10 times the energy as a regular search engine.
The IEA estimates more than 8,000 data centres now operate around the world, with about one-third located in the United States. About 300 centres operate in Canada.
It’s a growing opportunity in Alberta, where unlike anywhere else in the country, data centre operators can move more swiftly by “bringing their own power.”
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market, large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers instead of relying solely on the power of the existing grid.
Between 2018 and 2023, data centres in Alberta generated approximately $1.3 billion in revenue, growing on average by about eight percent per year, lawyers with Calgary-based McMillan LLP wrote in July.
“Alberta has a long history of building complex, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects with success and AI data centres could be the next area of focus for this core competency,” McMillan’s Business Law Bulletin reported.
In recent years, companies such as Amazon and RBC have negotiated power purchase agreements for renewable energy to power local operations and data centres, while supporting the construction of some of the country’s largest renewable energy projects, McMillan noted.
While the majority of established data centres generally have clustered near telecommunications infrastructure, the next wave of projects is increasingly seeking sites with electricity infrastructure and availability of reliable power to keep their servers running.
The intermittent nature of wind and solar is challenging for growth in these projects, Rusty Braziel, executive chairman of Houston, Texas-based consultancy RBN Energy wrote in July
“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas,” Braziel said.
TC Energy chief operating officer Stan Chapman sees an opportunity for his company’s natural gas delivery in Canada and the United States.
“In Canada, there’s around 300 data centre operations today. We could see that load increasing by one to two gigawatts before the end of the decade,” Chapman said in a conference call with analysts on August 1.
“Never have I seen such strong prospects for North American natural gas demand growth,” CEO François Poirier added.
Alberta is Canada’s largest natural gas producer, and natural gas is the base of the province’s power grid, supplying about 60 percent of energy needs, followed by wind and solar at 27 percent.
“Given the heavy power requirements for AI data centres, developers will likely need to bring their own power to the table and some creative solutions will need to be considered in securing sufficient and reliable energy to fuel these projects,” McMillan’s law bulletin reported.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which operates the province’s power grid, is working with at least six proposed data centre proposals, according to the latest public data.
“The companies that build and operate these centres have a long list of requirements, including reliable and affordable power, access to skilled labour and internet connectivity,” said Ryan Scholefield, the AESO’s manager of load forecasting and market analytics.
“The AESO is open for business and will work with any project that expresses an interest in coming to Alberta.”
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