Canadian oil and gas giants tread warily 11/22/2009
New-look Suncor and EnCana roll out disciplined 2010 spending plans, leaving flexibility to boost budgets if commodity prices rise
While trading places as Canada's dominant oil and natural company, Suncor Energy and EnCana are both delivering a similar refrain for 2010 - steady as it goes. Suncor is the new king of the hill after...

Mining Explorers 2009: Bokan Mountain deposit is rare earth 11/01/2009
Ucore focuses on exploration of strategic rare earth elements in Southeast Alaska
Ucore Uranium Inc., a junior based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has shifted its primary focus at the Bokan Mountain Granite complex in Southeast Alaska from uranium to rare earth elements. Ucore changed...

Fiscal climate in eastern Canada calm 10/11/2009
Area economy small, driven by large offshore projects; Repsol newest player; ConocoPhillips hunting rig, may face political issues
Eastern Canada is a region normally associated with high winds and high unemployment. Ironically, however, the fiscal climate there remains calm during this recession. In some parts of the region, rea...

Canada's offshore oil patch skirts storm 10/04/2009
Newfoundland, Labrador experiencing private sector growth in economic downturn, mostly due to offshore oil and gas investment
As a perfect economic storm batters global markets one hatch of the Canadian ship of state remains wide open to boom times. Newfoundland and Labrador - known across Canada as The Rock - is experiencin...

Nova Scotia gas field poised for expansion 09/13/2009
The dwindling reserves at Nova Scotia's offshore Sable natural gas project may be close to getting a lift from inclusion of the Chebucto field, which has proved plus probable reserves of about 160 bil...

Canada's multitrillion-dollar engine 08/16/2009
Study forecasts petroleum industry could pump incremental C$3.6 trillion into GDP over next 25 years, spreading jobs, tax benefits
The anti-petroleum faction in Canada has been given something to ponder, if it has an open mind. Whatever the industry's failings - and even the strongest defenders concede there are many - the flip s...

B.C. offshore on teeter-totter 07/26/2009
Government talk of removing exploration moratoriums enters quiet phase; Ottawa under pressure to create Pacific management areas
It was six months ago when an exploration consultant suggested the "silent majority" should speak out if ever British Columbia was to remove the barriers standing in the way of offshore oil and gas ex...

Texas brothers tackle Scotia deep waters 07/12/2009
The Bass brothers of Texas, operating through their wholly owned BEPCo Canada Co., have acquired two deepwater exploration licenses covering 1.24 million acres offshore Nova Scotia for a total work co...

Mining News: Bokan Mountain may be strategic deposit 06/28/2009
Investors take note as demand for unfamiliar rare earth elements raises profile of resource in Southeast as global supply shrinks
Advances in high technology, especially the recent drive to produce increasingly efficient hybrid automobiles, is spurring demand for rare earth elements and energizing a little-known mining sector wi...

Spanish make landfall in Atlantic Canada 03/01/2009
It's not quite a Spanish Armada, but there's no longer any doubt that the Spaniards have made landfall in Atlantic Canada's oil and natural gas plays. Five days after EnCana reported its long-delayed...

Spring hopes evaporate this summer 09/28/2008
Oil patch investment, exploration spending lag comparable 2007 activities in Canada as prices and company earnings climb
A surge of second-quarter optimism in Canada's upstream, amid a healthy revival of natural gas prices and the relentless rise in oil prices, disappeared almost as fast as it surfaced. Despite the maj...

Hunt for Labrador natural gas revived 09/21/2008
Newfoundland royalty regime, technology advances attract C$186 million in exploration bids; gas discoveries to date total 4.2 Tcf
Just as it happened in Western Canada, the search for oil occurred long before anyone began looking for natural gas on Canada's East Coast. But the potential resource of 61 trillion cubic feet offshor...

Industry hails the shales of B.C. 06/29/2008
It's turning into a stampede almost without parallel in Canada's oil and gas industry as companies do more than just chase an alternative to Alberta's maturing conventional basin. In the space of les...

A sea change in North America 06/29/2008
Shale revives dreams of energy self-sufficiency extending over hundreds of years, driven by technological gains, oil prices
Whimsical or not, more commentators are suggesting that North America is on the verge of pushing back the "peak oil" threshold by hundreds of years. That was reminiscent of the loose talk in the 1960s...

U.S. energy buys stoke Canadian economy 05/25/2008
Energy exports in 2007 valued at C$90 billion, almost 1/5 of Canadian exports; U.S. shipments account for 66% of oil, 54% of gas
The extent to which energy is powering the Canadian economy - and contributing to security of supply in the United States - has been brought even more sharply into focus with the latest set of statist...

MINING NEWS: Alaska tumbles in mining policy ranking 03/30/2008
Mining survey reflects growing uneasiness in industry about Alaska's public policies, mixed results among Canadian jurisdictions
Alaska would be a great place for mining companies to do business if not for the state's increasingly onerous regulatory and fiscal policies, according to the latest results of a well-respected indust...

Canada LNG: In with a whimper 03/16/2008
Two federal project approvals raise barely a ripple as proponents continue search for supplies, face competition from Europe, Asia
Two of Canada's proposed liquefied natural gas projects have received regulatory green lights, but they were accompanied by barely lukewarm enthusiasm from the federal government, reflecting the troub...

Alaska well-placed in global survey 12/23/2007
As reported in last week's issue of Petroleum News, Alaska trails Wyoming and Colorado among U.S. states, but edges out all Canadian provinces except Saskatchewan in a study of investment "friendlines...

Alberta getting nudged off center-stage as tax hikes prompt big EandP companies to shift capital spending to United States 12/23/2007
The verdicts are rolling in for Alberta's proposed new royalty regime as the leading EandP companies take the wrapping off their 2008 capital budgets. But, in the process, those companies are reinforcin...

Petro-Canada weighs Arctic LNG 12/09/2007
Petro-Canada is not ready to forsake the frontier mindset that was part of its birthright when it was created as a state-owned company in 1975. Chief Executive Officer Ron Brenneman told a company-spo...

LNG a continental wild card 11/25/2007
North America could benefit from tapping into global resource; greater LNG volumes could displace higher-cost conventional, unconventional, frontier supplies
Liquefied natural gas could play a key role in ensuring supply-and-demand balance and steady prices in North American markets over at least the next seven years, offsetting declines in Canadian export...

Deep Panuke edges closer to go-ahead 10/14/2007
Defying the odds and the doubters, Nova Scotia's offshore Deep Panuke natural gas scheme keeps plodding its way to a go-ahead decision by operator EnCana. Almost four years after being pulled from the...

Protecting Arctic waters 09/30/2007
Joint program researches aspects of responding to oil spill in ice-infested waters
Worldwide interest in the petroleum potential of the Arctic seas has triggered a corresponding focus on the practicalities of responding to an oil spill, were disaster to strike an offshore oil operat...

Canadian leaders split over greenhouse gas emissions 08/19/2007
The leaders of Canada's 10 provinces and three territories ended a three-day conference deeply divided over attempts to set absolute reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and start a national carbon-...

Nova Scotia offshore gas project rebounds 07/22/2007
Nova Scotia's offshore Sable gas project, which serves the New England market, has pulled itself out of a nosedive. The latest numbers from the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board show product...