It's important that we carefully examine claims made about our oil sands. The Premier, in this video, makes some claims which are, at best, misleading due to errors of omission. NB: Due to a lack of disclosure, I am not sure if he has received foreign funding. 1/N #ableg
"A barrel of Alberta heavy crude has a lower carbon footprint than the average barrel around the world." Really? Based on what? Here's Masnadi et al data on global crude supply. No, AB barrels are not below the global average. 2/N 
What's the omission? Perhaps the Premier is referring to other heavy oil barrels with a field-weighted average? Perhaps the Premier has a citation that he can share to that effect. There are certainly some higher-emissions barrels, as shown here via California import data. 3/N
Let's continue:
"As I've said, we've reduce emissions by 30% in bitumen."
We definitely have not reduced our emissions associated with bitumen production. Since 1990, our bitumen production emissions have increased by a factor of 6.
He probably means emissions intensity. 4/N
"As I've said, we've reduce emissions by 30% in bitumen."
We definitely have not reduced our emissions associated with bitumen production. Since 1990, our bitumen production emissions have increased by a factor of 6.
He probably means emissions intensity. 4/N
Let's assume the Premier just forgot the word intensity. It happens. But, we have never reduced our GHG intensity of bitumen production by 30%. The most we've ever been down, on a per-barrel basis, is 24%. Here's our emissions-intensity per produced barrel since 1990. 5/N
The Premier says we're on track for "another 20%". Where are his data likely coming from? I'd expect he's citing the IHS Oil Sands Dialogue piece from last fall. A good report. They forecast a 16-25% improvement. CERI has similar figures. 6/N
But. here's the problem - the trends are not pointing that way yet. As you can see from the graph above, our mined bitumen production represents our lowest-emissions barrels. We've recently added two new mines - Fort HIlls and Kearl - both with very low expected GHG/bbl. 7/N
Our in-situ barrels are much higher on a GHG/bbl basis, and that's where we're expected to add production. Today, our production is back to about 48% mining (per CAPP 2019), but that's expected to drop to 42% by 2035, so all-else-equal, more GHG-intensive average production. 8/N
This is where things get a bit challenging. The Premier talks about innovation and solvents and all sorts of things which are showing promise in pilots, but that promise has not yet translated to the field. Since 2015, the amount of steam we're using per barrel is going up.
There's another trend that's helping - we're upgrading fewer barrels, which means our total in-Alberta emissions divided by our barrels produced is going down, as are the processing components of the life cycle emissions from our production as a result, so we can't forget that.
How important is that trend? It's big, at least insofar as the mined barrels go. A Kearl barrel, life cycle was estimated by Masnadi at al. at 13.1g/MJ, compared to oil sands synthetic barrels in the 24-30g/MJ range (that's the good news - a huge improvement).
The bad news? The US light tight oil barrels tend to be even lower still: Bakken and Permian in around 12g/MJ with Eagle Ford at 8g/MJ. The lowest life cycle emissions in the study was 3g/MJ. So, mostly good news and some bad news for Kearl at 13.1g/MJ.
Can an in-situ barrel get down to that range? Sure. Cenovus Christina Lake barrels are already down there, as are MEG and a few others. There are also some big outliers. I hope the Premier is right that these innovations will be deployed in new and existing projects.
Lastly, the Premier is correct that Suncor's new project to replace coke burning combustion with natural gas combustion to generate heat and power is wonderful news. There's more to be done there too: Syncrude also burns petcoke for fuel.
I look forward to a vastly-expanded array of "real and current data" from the Government of Alberta on both environmental performance and other ESG metrics. At least, in this case, we're not being told it's a flavour of the month. /fin
