A voice on the buyer side of the natural gas market joined a supplier chorus in making a Canadian counterpart to the appeals of American producers for improved access to resource development targets in the United States.

In submissions to an annual meeting of the federal and provincial energy ministers in Halifax, the Toronto-based Canadian Gas Association lined up with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers from Calgary. Both groups put resource access at the top of their wish lists for action by all levels of Canadian government.

The CGA, voice of Canadian distribution companies, said “volatility in the price of natural gas over the past few years has provided a fair warning of growing impediments to gas supply and deliverability.” The top item on the action agenda that association urged on the Canadian energy ministers was “overly restricted land access for new exploration and development, increasing supply-side tightness.”

CAPP likewise called the government’s attentions to a “growing burden of regulatory processes,” warning that red tape “outweighs other advantages of investing in Canada,” including its relatively untapped resource deposits.

The theme will continue to be heard from a cross-section of the Canadian economy thanks to high stature that the oil and gas industry has lately achieved in national production, revenue and employment growth. In a recent report on the western provinces, the Conference Board of Canada declared “the oil and gas industry . . . has been Canada’s most productive industry since 2000 and has been the engine for much of the country’s economic prosperity and growth. More than 500,000 Canadians are directly or indirectly employed in the sector. In Western Canada, just under 60,000 are employed directly in the oil and gas sector. With discoveries in Atlantic Canada and in the north, oil and gas are no longer simply western issues, although Western Canada is responsible for the vast majority of Canada’s current production as well as much of its future potential.”

That national stature was also highlighted by a breakthrough for gas producers at the top of the lobbying pyramid in Ottawa. For the first time in an 80-year history, the 170,000-member Canadian Chamber of Commerce picked a figure from the oil and gas industry to be its chairman: Calgarian Gerard Protti, executive vice-president for corporate relations at the top Canadian gas producer, EnCana Corp.

In an inaugural interview, Protti identified resource access as the top priority for the oil and gas industry. It will figure on the Ottawa-based, national business organization’s agenda in much the same way that it appears on the priority list of the CGA – as a call for reduced and simplified regulation.

Protti described oil and gas as a classic example of a Canadian epidemic: excessive regulation owed partly to jurisdictional duplication and partly to a historical backlog of policies that need to be reviewed and pared down. “We need 20 separate federal and provincial permits to drill offshore of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Significantly more time is spent on the regulatory process offshore of Canada than in any other jurisdiction.” Protti added “that’s one case study.” He pointed out that Canadian financial institutions have to deal with 50 separate provincial and federal authorities.

On the consumer side of the Canadian gas market, the CGA agenda also includes more customary priority items for the nation’s distributors such as regulated rates of return being held below U.S. counterparts and taxation of capital assets.

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