We need prodouction numbers and any plans for natural gas will make this one skyrocket. Canada is cutting back tremendously! See this excerpt from ENERGY and CAPITAL!
Canada: In the Northwest Territories, the Deh Cho tribe, the last aboriginal holdout against a natural gas pipeline across the Mackenzie Valley, is making their approval of the project conditional upon the federal government's agreeing to set aside 60% of the tribe's lands as protected wilderness. The 1,220-kilometer pipeline is needed to access large gas reserves in the Arctic, but its cost has more than doubled to $16.2 billion.
Natural gas drilling in Canada has also been dampened by the Canadian government's dubious decision to kill the golden goose of investment money flowing into its energy projects, by phasing out the sweet tax benefits the Canadian investment trusts that funded the projects used to enjoy.
Accordingly, exploration and production companies are scaling back on drilling. The number of drilling rigs that are now operating in Canada is less than half those that were operating there at the end of 2005.
"A lot of marginal drilling activity taking place last year is probably gone for good," said Bill Herbert, co-head of research for Simmons & Company International. He called the spate of rig withdrawals a "bloodbath," and projected that the second quarter of this year will see the rig count fall by 40 percent from last year's level.
For those of you keeping score, this is not good news. North America is well past the peak of its natural gas production and is on the decline. We need to increase imports just to stay even with current consumption. But, as we are seeing in southern California, new facilities for importing natural gas aren't exactly being welcomed with open arms.
