1.  Is Alaska losing ground in the world competition for oil and gas investment?  Of course she is.  Poor, foolish Alaska…thinking everyone would always come to her court no matter how high her taxes, how burdensome her regulations, how remote and hard to access her resources from the markets.  See our earlier editorial.  Then, link to this stunning story reflecting the British Columbia-Alberta competition which Alaska has tried earnestly to ignore, until the last week or so.  -dh

 
     Financial Post, by Carrie Tait — British Columbia fired the latest round Thursday in the North American battle to woo natural gas producers, unveiling miniscule royalty rates and millions of dollars in fresh infrastructure incentives in a move that may force neighbouring Alberta to respond to in kind.
 
     In an effort to prod natural gas production in its Montney and Horn River shale plays, B.C. reduced the royalty rate on wells drilled between September and June 2010 to 2% for one year. Producers now pay an average royalty rate of about 20%.
“The oil and gas industry’s capital is mobile — it can be invested anywhere in the world, so if you want to be a part of that, you want to ensure you have a competitive jurisdiction,” Blair Lekstrom, B.C.’s minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, said in an interview. “We want to secure the future of the oil and gas industry in British Columbia.”  Read it on Global News: B.C. and Alberta in a natural gas poker game 
 
     Alberta and B.C., Canada’s top natural-gas producers, have traded royalty announcements this year. In March, B.C. rolled out royalty breaks, extending a program it launched in 2004. Alberta unveiled its own incentives a day later, reducing royalties on some new conventional oil and gas wells to 5% or less for at least a year. It later extended that program in June.
While the two provinces are in fierce competition with each other, the royalty rate war extends beyond Canada’s borders. Prolific natural gas basins such as the Barnett shale in Texas and the Marcellus in Pennsylvania are sponging up billions of dollars worth of investments.
 
     “I really do see it as more of a North American-wide commodity and competition for investment,” said Richard Dunn, EnCana Corp.’s vice-president of regulatory and external relations for its Canadian Foothills division. “The Canadian jurisdictions have to be competitive.”

Read it on Global News: B.C. and Alberta in a natural gas poker game