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“These supply-side downturns are always longer to come out of and worse than you think they are going to be,” Bowzer said. “We have been planning for lower prices for the next couple of years.”

Baytex suspended its dividend and twice cut its capital expenditure target this year. It has also shut-in production of 2,400 barrels per day in Western Canada due to poor economics, the CEO said.

Enerplus Corp., another seasoned Canadian operator, is also seeing growth from basins south of the border, namely North Dakota and the Marcellus. The Calgary-based company was once a gas-weighted Canadian producer but has slowly transitioned towards oil in the U.S. shale basins.

This year the company allocated 70 per cent of its capital to its Williston basin in the U.S. Bakken and the Marcellus in Pennsylvania.

“The Marcellus is an incredible play,” Ian Dundas, CEO of Enerplus said in an interview. “The Marcellus is clearly going to affect natural gas flows, and squeeze mid-continent and put pressure on Canadian gas operators. It was one of the reasons that we got into it.”

At US$40 per barrel, the payout period — the time it would take for investors to recoup their capital — is three years in the Marcellus and 2.3 years in the best plays in the Eagle Ford, compared to six years in the Canadian crude oil plays, according to Peters & Co. research.