Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) on Nov. 25 released its “Assessment of Discovered Conventional Petroleum Resources in the Northwest Territories and Beaufort Sea,” revealing that the overall resource evaluation for the Northwest Territories (NWT) is thought to be larger than previously estimated.
The discovered conventional petroleum resource volumes in the study area total:
• 467 billion cu m (16.4 tcf) of marketable natural gas.
• 195.1 million cu m (1,227.8 million bbl) of crude oil.
• 8.5 million cu m (53.3 million bbl) of natural gas liquids.
In the Beaufort Sea and NWT mainland, natural gas estimates are up 40% compared with previous NEB assessments, while oil is down 11% and NGLs are down 25%. This marks the first time the NEB has analyzed the NWT Arctic Islands.
NEB says the report compiled data of discovered petroleum resources in the NWT mainland, NWT Arctic Islands, and Beaufort Sea. The report also includes several natural gas discoveries made in the NWT since 1999 that had not been included in the NEB’s previous national resource assessments.
The report’s assessment includes production volumes up to December 2013 from the Norman Wells oil field of the Mackenzie Plain, the Ikhil gas field of the Mackenzie Delta, and the Cameron Hills oil field in the eastern side of the Great Slave Plain, NEB indicates.
