Page 10 - NorthAmOil Week 22

NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil

Asphaltene found in
bitumen can also be
used for making carbon
fibre.

the energy industry to provide innovative tech- subsequent decades, benefiting all Canadians,”
nologies and processing expertise to help scale they wrote.
renewable production”. Such initiatives could prove attractive to the
They added that such partnerships, combin- Canadian government, which has sought to bal-
ing the expertise of different sectors, would lead ance economic development – including energy
to breakthroughs that would help Canada to suc- production – with meeting the country’s envi-
ceed on the world stage. ronmental goals under the Paris Agreement.
Little and Kilcrease added that there were And new revenue streams could be wel-
also areas beyond biofuels that presented signif- comed by an industry that has been hit hard by
icant opportunities. These include carbon fibre, low oil prices and a negative public image that is
which is increasingly used in lighter vehicles and proving difficult to shake. There is some uncer-
building materials that store – rather than emit tainty over how COVID-19 will affect the pace
– carbon in their fabrication. The feedstock for of the energy transition, but before the disease
making carbon fibre is asphaltene, which makes was declared a pandemic, a growing number of
up 15-20% of bitumen – representing a potential oil producers were committing to decarbonisa-
source of revenue for oil sands producers. tion like never before. Among them was another New revenue
“If we can figure out how to do this afforda- leading oil sands producer, Cenovus Energy,
bly at scale, it has the potential to quadruple the which announced in January that it was aiming streams could be
revenue from Alberta’s current bitumen output,” to achieve “net zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) welcomed by an
Little and Kilcrease wrote. According to esti- emissions by 2050.
mates provided by Alberta Innovates, the added Assuming COVID-19 does not slow the industry that has
economic potential of carbon fibre, activated energy transition – or even reverse it – more oil
carbon and asphalt binder alone could be up to and oil sands producers will be adjusting their been hit hard by
CAD84bn ($62bn) per year. strategies to factor in the energy transition in the
coming months and years. Moving into com- low oil prices and
What next? plementary industries could prove an attractive a negative public
Little and Kilcrease are now calling for federal option at this point.
investment to support industry diversification Conversely, for some companies the sole image.
into areas such as hydrogen, renewable jet fuel focus right now is their own survival. How soon
and carbon fibre. the survivors of the downturn could start shift-
“Now is the time for the federal govern- ing their attention to other priorities depends
ment to support disruptive innovation in the in part on how COVID-19 and the behaviour
same spirit as the Alberta Oil Sands Technol- of leading oil producers affect oil demand and
ogy and Research Authority (AOSTRA), which prices in the short and medium term. For now,
was launched in 1974 and made technological much remains unknown, but some major pro-
breakthroughs that unlocked hundreds of bil- ducers, including Suncor, are already exploring
lions of dollars of value from the oil sands in the potential ways forward.™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 22 04•June•2020