Abstract
This paper intends to develop quantitative indicators for comparative sustainability assessment of petroleum oil pathways in the province of Alberta, Canada. Eighteen pathways of oil production were developed in this study, and the sustainability indicators were assigned for each pathway to cover greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water demand, and land use in addition to the cost of supply. The developed sustainability indicators were aligned per functional unit and covered the full life cycle of petroleum oil production. The developed GHG emissions, cost of supply, and land use indicators are found in the range 17.50–226.20 kg of CO2 eq./bbl, 12.28–53.53 USD/bbl, and 0.06–0.178 m2/bbl, respectively. Four scenarios were comparatively conducted and assessed against the business-as-usual scenario within the period horizon 2009–2030. The cost-effective scenario was optimized with the objective function to minimize the cost of supply based on the constraints derived from the business-as-usual scenario. Sustainable scenarios were conducted with the lowest possible impacts on natural resources, GHG emissions, and the cost of supply accompanied by specific assumptions for petroleum oil production from different pathways in Alberta. The average annual savings on water demand and land area were found to be 67 and 30%, respectively, due to the shifting of upgrader feedstock from surface mining to the in-situ steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) pathway. The corresponding increases due to this shifting in upgrader feedstock were found to be 40 and 3% in GHG emissions and cost of supply, respectively.
Highlights
The production of petroleum oil in the province of Alberta, Canada, relies on both conventional and unconventional resources
The expectation for oil sands production in Alberta is that it will account for 75% of the total Canadian crude oil production by the end of 2035; 95% of the conventional oil produced during 2018 in Western Canada was from Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces [1]
Non-upgraded oil sands recovered through in-situ has water demand and land use indicators compared to the eighteen developed pathways in the thislowest study, impacts on water demand and land use indicators compared to the eighteen developed pathways in while its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cost of supply (COS) are in the fourth-lowest place compared to the all this study, while its GHG
Summary
The production of petroleum oil in the province of Alberta, Canada, relies on both conventional and unconventional resources. Alberta is a hub of petroleum oil production that has income benefits to the province and is constrained by considerable environmental challenges. Alberta produced 2.9 million bbl/day from oil sands resources in 2018, and the contribution in the total revenues in the same year was 1.13 billion Canadian dollars (CAD) and. Environmental impacts from petroleum oil production in Alberta on air are represented mainly by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [3,4,5,6,7], on water posed by qualitative and quantitative amounts of water use [8,9,10,11], and on land use described by the occupation and disturbance [12]
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