This infographic illustrates the volumes of oil we produce, ship, spill, and consume in Canada. Each square in this section represents a single barrel of oil. As you scroll down, we'll switch to larger , larger , and larger orders of magnitude. This visualization heavily cribs from The Visual Capitalist's All the World's Money.
Canada is the third highest per-capita consumer of oil in the world - we use about 9 barrels of oil per person every year. That's more than double the OECD average of 4 barrels per capita per year. Canada is a big, cold country so we do have to drive further and heat our homes more. But we also love our energy.
The distance from Halifax to Vancouver is approximately 5800km by road. If you drive a car with a fuel efficiency of 10L / 100km you'll use about 3 barrels worth of gas. Note that a barrel of oil after refining yeilds about 46% gasoline.
If you take a plane it's a little more direct (4400km). A 747 would use approximately 471 barrels worth of jet fuel. Each barrel of oil yields about 4% jet fuel.
Cruise ships use a lot of fuel. Sailing from Halifax to Quebec City (1500km, only one third the distance to Vancouver) uses an incredible 2,216 barrels worth of fuel. (But cruise ships do move many many people at once)
Halifax → Quebec City by Cruise Ship =
Canadians drink a staggering 2.4 billion litres of bottled water a year. 15,000 barrels of oil are needed to produce all that plastic.
Toronto has 14,800 lane-kms of road. If 1% of Toronto's roads are repaved every year, 95,000 barrels of oil would need to be used to make the asphalt required.
Canadians discard 12 million tires every year. To manufacture 12 million new tires 2,040,000 barrels of oil are needed.
The Trans Mountain pipeline was constructed in 1951. Since 2005 about 5,500 barrels of oil have leaked from the old pipe.
The Lac Magentic rail disaster in 2013 was one of the deadliest rail accidents in Canadian history. From the 74 rail cars, 35,000 barrels of oil were spilled or burned.
The Exxon Valdez is one of the most famous oil spills in history. It released 260,000 barrels of oil into the ocean near Alaska in 1989.
Deepwater Horizon Spill =
Once extracted, oil must be brought to refineries for processing. Some of the biggest transport methods used in Canada are rail and pipeline. Rail is used to move oil all over the country. The Trans Mountain pipeline moves Alberta oil to the BC coast to load into tankers. The Keystone pipeline moves oil to the US. 99% of Canadian oil exports are to the US.
Existing capacity
Proposed expansions - Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion and Keystone XL
In 2016 approximately 1.6 billion barrels of oil were produced from Canadian sources. More than half of that (876 million barrels) came from the oil sands.
Produced by oil sands
Produced from traditional sources
Extracted in Canada / year =
In 2018 the demand for oil world-wide is approximately 36 billion barrels per year
Canada has one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world with 171 billion barrels of oil yet to be extracted. Nearly all of it is in the oil sands.
Reserves in the oil sands
Reserves in traditional sources
Worldwide there are approximately 1.6 trillion barrels of proven reserves. 82% of those are in OPEC countries. This leaves Canada with more than half of the non-OPEC reserves.
Reserves in OPEC counties
Reserves in the rest of the world