A new report from Alberta's energy regulator says the province spent more than $30-billion on energy development in 2024.Larry MacDougal/The Canadian Press
Alberta’s energy sector spent $30.9-billion to develop oil, gas, hydrogen, geothermal, helium and lithium resources in 2024, a nine-year high, according to a new report.
The 2025 Alberta Energy Outlook, released Wednesday by the province’s energy regulator, highlights rising bitumen output and a significant increase in Alberta’s oil and gas reserves estimates.
The report comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes for Canada to become an energy superpower – a message and a goal that the energy sector says it can get behind. The premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan are also using Mr. Carney’s target to push for pipelines and trade corridors to further expand market access.
Total Alberta oil production continued to rise in 2024, owing to favourable oil prices and the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline system coming online. In 2024, Alberta’s raw crude bitumen production was close to 3.6 million barrels a day, a 4-per-cent increase from 2023, according to the report.
Natural gas production also increased – albeit by a marginal 0.2 per cent – despite lower prices.
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Afshin Honarvar, the principal economist at the Alberta Energy Regulator, said in a statement that the outlook emphasized “Alberta’s crucial role in providing affordable and reliable energy.”
Even in the face of various emissions-reduction goals at the federal and provincial levels, Alberta’s oil production is forecast to grow, increasing to 4.7 million barrels a day by 2034.
That’s regardless of whether U.S. import tariffs on Canadian petroleum maintain the status quo of zero or rise to 10 per cent. (The report factors both tariff scenarios into all of its forecasts.)
Total capital expenditures in the crude oil, natural gas, oil sands and emerging resources sectors are set to reach $41.5-billion in 2034 in the base case and $40.1-billion in the tariff case.
But the report highlights that growth is not limited to oil and gas.
Alberta’s emerging-resource sector – hydrogen, geothermal, helium and lithium – also continues to accelerate.
Hydrogen production is expected to climb from 2.6 million tonnes a year in 2024 to 4.4 million by 2034, while helium production is forecast to increase fivefold over the same period.
The AER is gung-ho on lithium as well. It reckons that production will reach 14,000 tonnes a year, even though Alberta has no commercial lithium output today.
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Drilling for oil and gas also increased by 16 per cent in 2024 to its highest level in 16 years. The 10-per-cent drop in the natural gas sector was easily offset by the increases in drilling for crude (22 per cent) and in the oil sands (16 per cent).
In all, the province remains the largest oil and gas producer in Canada, at 84 per cent and 61 per cent of the national totals, respectively. And it maintains its dominant position with proved oil sands reserves, substantially surpassing reserves in Texas.
Roughly 48 per cent of the raw bitumen produced in Alberta was upgraded to other products in 2024, a 4.5-per-cent increase over the prior year. The report forecasts that total will fall to about 44 per cent by 2034 as production growth outstrips capacity additions to processing facilities.
Approximately one million tonnes of carbon dioxide were permanently sequestered by carbon capture in 2024, a level similar to the previous year.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson recently said the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers needs to get a move on with its planned carbon capture project to demonstrate to global markets that Canada’s oil and gas sector is a responsible one.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wants to see Pathways on a list of major infrastructure projects that Ottawa is aiming to get approved and built more quickly – a goal Mr. Hodgson emphasized during a speech to the Toronto Regional Board of Trade on Wednesday.
In particular, he highlighted the One Canadian Economy Act, passed last week by the House of Commons.
“We know that if we want to build faster, we can’t be duplicating regulatory efforts, delaying decisions or creating bottlenecks between jurisdictions. We must act like a single country – not a patchwork,“ he said.
“When our federal, provincial and territorial governments send clear signals – that we are serious, co-ordinated and committed to delivery – investment follows."