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“There are 700 million people on the face of the Earth, about 10 per cent, that are struggling with extreme poverty and they need more energy to change their standard of living,” Little said. “That’s why this is a quandary because the world really needs more energy and less emissions and that whole mantra is actually caught up in this (Frontier) … approval,” he said.

Suncor, Canada’s largest oilsands producer after Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., has an interest in seeing new bitumen projects approved as 95 per cent of its 7.8 billion barrels of probable oil reserves are in the oilsands. The company aims to increase its output by 5 per cent to as much as 840,000 bpd and spend around $6 billion in capital expenditure this year.

Contrary to the oilsands’ reputation as a high-emissions basin, Suncor’s new oilsands projects have full life-cycle emissions equivalent to the barrels being produced in the United States, Little said.



The world really needs more energy and less emissions and that whole mantra is actually caught up in this (Frontier) ... approval, Suncor CEO Mark Little

“I don’t want to overstate this — this isn’t the average performance of the industry. But our new developments are that way and we’re looking at all sorts of ideas to take it even further. I look at it and think, this could be one of the lowest emission sources of oil globally going forward and that’s the challenge that we’ve put to ourselves.”

The company is working on technologies that would reduce emissions in its in-situ projects by 50 to 80 per cent, for example.



“So it’s kind of like, ‘ok, is it zero?’ No it’s not zero, we need to deal with that and maybe we need to offset some of it,” Little said. “Technology is a huge card. Innovation is something that’s allowed us to continue and adapt as we go forward.”