Province

Suncor Energy Inc. is writing off $1.5 billion of the investment in the centerpiece of its $20.6 billion oilsands expansion, the Voyageur Upgrader, which would turn heavy bitumen into light oil, in part because of stunning production growth in U.S. oil shales.

Canada’s First Nations on Wednesday protested across the country — blocking railways, border crossings, and in some places hindered access to oil and natural gas facilities — to protest the federal government’s passage last month of an omnibus budget bill that altered the rules for leasing tribal lands.

Authorities in Quebec have been monitoring environmental groups opposed to shale gas development in the province for the last two years on fears that their activities could become radicalized and violent, according to a report by La Presse, a French newspaper in Montreal.

States increasingly will push for more disclosure of the hydraulic fracturing process.

Environmental regulators in British Columbia (BC) have approved a request by Pacific Trail Pipelines LP (PTP) for an expansion to the Kitimat to Summit Lake (KSL) Looping Project, a proposed pipeline to transport natural gas from the Horn River Basin in Western Canada to the Pacific coast.

The Canadian Yukon province has joined an industry campaign to keep drilling open in the Beaufort Sea by convincing the National Energy Board (NEB) there will be no arctic repeat of last year’s Gulf of Mexico Macondo blowout.

The Canadian Yukon province has joined an industry campaign to keep drilling open in the Beaufort Sea by convincing the National Energy Board (NEB) there will be no arctic repeat of last year’s Gulf of Mexico Macondo blowout.

High oil prices have lifted producer interest in liquids-rich natural gas plays; they’ve also pulled up the economic attractiveness of converting gas to liquid fuels and other products.

Canada provides about a quarter of Devon Energy Corp.’s oil and natural gas production, and with most of it in the Alberta province — where the royalty regime is being revised — the company is taking a long look at whether to revise its portfolio plans in 2008, the CEO said last week.