Natural gas dominates drilling agenda

Gary Park

Petroleum News Calgary correspondent

Oil prices at 14-year highs have not been enough to divert Western Canada’s conventional producers from their hunger for natural gas.

For the first four months of 2004, regulators in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia issued 8,078 permits for new wells, 72 percent of them targeting gas.

Across Canada, the tally to the end of April was 8,889, up 5 percent from the same period last year, but April’s count of 1,478 permits was down 9 percent from April 2003.

Coalbed methane continued its steady advance in Alberta, which approved 284 wells compared with 66 a year earlier.

Leading operators were EnCana with 407 licenses, Husky Energy 124, Apache Canada 88, EOG Resources Canada 76 and Petro-Canada 67.