“Lloydminster will be in the oil business as long as there is oil in the world of some commercial use,” says Calgary-based analyst David Yager.
His comments come as the Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show opened at the Lloydminster Exhibition Tuesday night. Yager, who has been writing about the oil and gas sector for some four decades, shared comments on the history of oil discovery on both sides of the city dating back to the 1940s.
He supports his assertion of the sustainability of the industry by referring to the OPEC outlook. In its monthly report for September 2022, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is maintaining its forecast for global oil demand at 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2022 and by 2.7 million bpd in 2023.
Yager goes further by saying that western countries under the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development comprising some 1.3 billion people are neglecting the viewpoint of some six billion people in the rest of the world, particularly India, Africa and China.
He points out that “China is not interested in cutting carbon emissions and India has said they are not going to participate.”
“So when OPEC looks at the world outlook for oil for the next 20 to 25 years, they see a completely different situation. They see 6.6 billion people that want the good life, and they are far more concerned with surviving another day, than what the weather may or may not be in 2100. That’s all. It’s just reality.”
For Lloydminster, he says over the last 80-years, the recovery rates are still low, with estimates that some 80 per cent of the heavy oil in this region is still in the ground.
Turning to the policies affecting global energy security and Canada’s role, Yager says modern politics has become very “tribal.”
“The federal government has basically built a coalition of urban Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver; the lower mainland. So you can win an election with the people that are resource consumers, not producers. They don’t know where anything comes from. They don’t know where the oil comes from. They know where electricity comes from. They know where their food comes from.”
He concludes this is the most polarized generation in history which is being used to gain political advantage.
The Heavy Oil Show is ongoing at the Lloydminster Exhibition with some 160 exhibitors through Thursday afternoon.