Peter Findlay

Research Associate

Based in Calgary, Peter Findlay leads the economics function for CCUS projects globally at Wood Mackenzie and contributes CCUS growth, incentive, and cost projections to the firm’s Energy Transition Scenarios team.

Mr. Findlay has led corporate finance, operations, and strategy consulting projects in oil and gas, power & utilities (including renewables and decarbonization), petrochemicals, and other sectors since 2008 with Kearney and other management consulting firms. He has worked on transaction, strategy, and corporate finance initiatives ranging in value from $50 MM to $40 billion for the world’s largest energy companies as well as much smaller operators, across the hydrocarbon and power value chains. He also advises on emerging technologies, primarily relating to decarbonization.

Mr. Findlay has published research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the UK on Canada’s oil sands and natural gas markets, as well as presented at the OPEC technical meetings.

Mr. Findlay started his career as an aerodynamic design engineer with Pratt & Whitney in Montreal in 2005 and has a Master’s of Science/Engineering degree in computational fluid dynamics and advanced numerical / data methods from McGill University, an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta and a finance-focused MBA from ESSEC, Warwick, and Mannheim Business schools in Europe.

Contact

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                    [post_content] => In the first half of this decade now coming to an end, Canada was a desirable hotspot for LNG proponents — over 20 liquefaction projects were proposed, primarily off Canada’s West Coast in the province of British Columbia, driven by supermajors, North American midstream operators, Asian national oil companies, and Asian consumers.

Since that time, investor interest in Canadian projects has waned and only the 13 mtpa LNG Canada plant has been sanctioned; the plant includes a yet unsanctioned 13 mtpa expansion option. Other projects faltered and shuttered due to concerns about escalating costs in remote areas, regulatory uncertainty, activist fervor, and tepid government support. Meanwhile, despite starting from behind with an overall higher cost of feedgas and much greater shipping distances to Asia, the US Gulf Coast has attracted a deluge of sanctioned (and ready to be sanctioned) LNG investment. Developments in Russia and Africa have also leapfrogged most Canadian project proponents to reach final investment decisions on world-scale projects.

Global competition to supply the projected LNG demand growth is fierce. This paper examines how Canada stacks up against other exporting countries: how Canadian LNG competes on cost; available LNG business models; security of supply; environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations; and the likelihood of getting a project approved and built — this last factor is where Canada seems to be frustrating, if not undermining its own LNG prospects.
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                    [post_content] => Since the 2014 price collapse, many observers have leaned towards a pessimistic view on future attractiveness and growth prospects in Canadian oil sands. The cooling off of integrated oil company enthusiasm for the oil sands provides easy fodder for analysts and journalists trying to extrapolate an underlying industry trend. These notions are however oversimplifications of a more nuanced and complex story. While oil sands costs escalated relentlessly from the ramp-up in the early 2000s through 2014,  recent cost reductions are impressive, due to decreasing differentials, a lower Canadian dollar, lower operating costs, lower capital costs, lower natural gas costs, and lower condensate costs for diluent. With their backs against the wall and shareholders clamouring, producers are consolidating and adapting as they have in previous downturns to become lean manufacturers. Suppliers and the labour market are starting to follow suit, further driving down costs with more competition and less rent-seeking than during the boom years. And though oil sands production is far from being environmentally innocuous, the visually unappealing open face mines are being reclaimed and greenfield projects have halted, while the lower-land impact, but higher-emitting SAGD operations are becoming less carbon intensive. Therefore, whether one is bearish or bullish on oil sands growth is a matter of perspective. Oil sands producers and investors may have a number of reasons to feel sanguine. But rapidly falling costs, streamlined designs and operations, labour and supplier availability, technological improvements, environmental impact reduction, and (eventually) new exit pipeline capacity, all point toward some level of continued growth in the oil sands. Looking ahead, the most vital for further oil sands growth is that the cornerstone Canadian-based producers demonstrate success in driving down full-cycle production costs, even beyond what has been already accomplished.
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                    [post_content] => Though the Canadian oil sands may have been overlooked in recent years, due to the impressive story of North American tight oil growth, their massive bitumen deposits still comprise a major portion of the world’s crude resources. With an estimated 170 billion barrels of economically proven reserves (amidst the 1.7-2.5 trillion barrels of oil in place in this northern region in the province of Alberta), the oil sands region itself represents approximately 10% of global reserves.

Oil sands are among the world’s sources of ‘difficult oil’ and are comparable in some respects to deep water, ultra-deep water, Arctic, and light tight oil (LTO). What difficult oil plays have in common are high supply costs (often above $60 per barrel) and an undeniable dependence on technological advances to remain economically attractive. Though Canada’s oil sands, like other unconventional plays, will likely play an increasingly prominent role in meeting future global demand to 2035 and beyond, substantial improvements in production and processing technologies, or a return to sustained high crude prices (or likely both), are required to deliver similar capacity additions as the last decade.

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Latest Publications by Peter Findlay