Canada's largest oil and gas industry organization, the Association of Petroleum Producers, has called on all political parties to include in their election programs support for pipeline projects and devise legislative initiatives aimed at speeding up the construction of such projects.
The Canadian Press reports that the CAPP also said in its election wish list that the next federal government could do better by the oil and gas industry, citing chief executive Tim McMillan as saying Canada had lost its competitive edge on the international oil and gas stage as a result of unfavorable policy changes and regulatory updates that have pushed investors away from Canada.
Indeed, a survey by the Daily Oil Bulletin earlier this year suggested that the industry blames both the federal government and the previous government of Alberta for the state the industry is in. As many as two-thirds of the 150 respondents in the survey said they were pessimistic about the immediate prospects of the oil and gas industry, the Daily Oil Bulletin reports, with over a third being very pessimistic. To make the picture even grimmer, only 3 percent said they were very optimistic, with 27 percent expressing some degree of optimism.
Addressing the causes for this pessimism, CAPP's McMillan said, "With global demand at an all-time high and with global demand increasing at near-record rates and global investment following, it is incumbent on the next government to create conditions necessary for Canada's oil and natural gas industry to succeed and play a key role on the world stage."
The sticking point, of course, is the Trans Mountain expansion project. On LNG, there seems to be a lot less opposition, at least from the provincial government that made it its life's goal to prevent the Trans Mountain expansion from taking place: British Columbia's NDP government. John Horgan's ministers are very pro-LNG and recently even passed legislation to incentivize investors to build more LNG export terminals. On Trans Mountain, however, it will be the federal government that will have the last word, expected later this month.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More