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"Canada is the world's seventh largest crude oil producer and has the world's third largest crude oil reserves. It has a strong refining industry, ranking eleventh in world capacity. Despite being a top 10 producer of crude oil, and having a strong refining industry, Canada processes only a fraction of Its own crude oil production. Most of the refineries in Canada, built when there were abundant supplies of light crude oil, were not configured to process growing volumes of heavy crude oil from the oil sands. Canadian refineries have imported significant volumes of crude oil, mostly light, because not all refineries have access to western Canadian crude oil. " Canadian Refinery Overview: Energy Market Assessment, National Energy Board (April 2018).
Canada's total refining capacity is 295,000 cubic metres/ day (m3/d) or 1,900,000 bbl/d, reports the National Energy Board (NEB). Of that, Quebec and Atlantic Canada have the most capacity with 782,000 bb/d, followed by Western Canada at 886,000 bbl/d, and Ontario with 390,000 bbl/d. Most do not operate at 100 per cent capacity, mostly due to planned and unplanned maintenance and outages. Last year, Canadian refineries operated at 84 per cent capacity.
The ugly truth is that only 30 per cent of Canadian crude oil is processed by Canadian refineries. The reason? This is mainly due to the size of the refining industry compared to the resource size, the location of its refineries, and the lack of cross-country pipeline connectivity. As of 2016 (latest figures available through Statistics Canada), Eastern Canadian imports rose slightly to 607,000 bbl/d - most from the U.S. at 259,000 bbl/d, followed by Saudi Arabia at 87,000 bbl/d, and Algeria with 85,000 bbl/d.
The following is the percentage comparison between Canadian crude oil production and crude oil receipts:
* 22 per cent of production is light and medium crude and is 54 per cent of refinery receipts:
* 28 per cent of production is synthetic crude and is 29 per cent of refinery receipts;
* 11 per cent of production is heavy crude oil and it represents 11 per cent of refinery...