Natural Gas Demand For Tar Sands Production Will Triple - Reuters

CALGARY, Alberta - A massive rise in crude production from Canada's oil sands region over the next decade will nearly triple the area's call on strained natural gas supplies, Canada's national energy regulator said Thursday.

Production from the oil sands of northern Alberta is expected to rise to more than 3 million barrels a day by 2015, according to a study by the National Energy Board, triple last year's output. However that increase will demand massive amounts of new natural gas for the oil sands projects that are increasingly prevalent around Fort McMurray, Alberta, even as Canadian supplies wane.

Natural gas is a key power source for oil sands projects. It is used as fuel to heat the steam used to liquefy the tar-like bitumen for thermal, well-based projects. It's also a source of heat and hydrogen in mining and upgrading projects, which turn bitumen into synthetic crude.

According to the NEB's 2006 oil sands Energy Market Assessment, the amount of gas used in oil sands production will rise to 2.1 billion cubic feet a day in 2015 from about 700 million cubic feet last year. If the board's forecast, which hinges on nearly C$100 billion (US$90.2 billion) worth of new projects being constructed by 2015, the area will use 13.2 percent of Canada's current daily gas output of about 17 billion cubic feet a day at the end of 2004. Canadian gas production peaked at 17.4 billion cubic feet a day in 2001 and 2002, according to figures from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and large new discoveries of natural gas have become rare.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36632/story.htm

I know a lot of people are against it but if we are going to use these tar sands then a nuclear plant to generate the steam for refining purposes would really save on the production of CO2 in processing the stuff.