Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
Peter Tertzakian is chief energy economist and managing director with Arc Financial Corp. in Calgary and provides analysis on technology and energy-related businesses to fund managers and portfolio companies.
A large part of the oil and gas renaissance is a consequence of reviving old fields with new technology.
Pennsylvania, where the industry had its genesis in the mid-1800s, and mostly forgotten in favor of more prolific finds a century ago, is now repositioning itself to be a dominant supplier of natural gas. Light oil fields throughout Texas, Oklahoma and Alberta — thought to have peaked in the 1970s — are making such a vigorous comeback that North American energy independence is the new phrase du jour. And who would have said a few years ago that North Dakota, a small and stable producer up until 2007, would be the next energy superpower?
So, it’s with interest that we watch big dollars being attracted to one of the oldest North American oil fields, the Sahtu Region of Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Drilling 160 kilometers below the Arctic Circle, near Fort Norman, N.W.T., Theodore Link, a geologist for Imperial Oil, is credited for drilling the first commercial oil well in the region.