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Crude oil prices have halved in the space of a year to around US$35 per barrel and could slip further to the high US$20s as major producers continue to flood the market with record output, Citigroup estimates. Alberta alone has seen job losses of 63,500 jobs in the first eight months of the year, mostly related to the oil sector, according to Statistics Canada.

Apart from the protracted price declines, Alberta’s oil and gas sector has also had to contend with a 20 per cent hike in corporate taxes, a carbon tax and new regulatory policies to limit rein in carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, a new provincial royalty regime is to be announced in January, leaving Alberta oil and gas producers under a cloud of uncertainty. The new federal government also plans to unveil new policies, including a review of the regulatory process, which the sector sees as more burden in an already difficult environment for the industry.

McMillan said those burdens are chipping away at Alberta’s competitiveness as an energy jurisdiction. In the 1990s, Canada attracted 37 per cent of all oil and gas investments in North America, a figure that now stands at 17 per cent, he said.

“I would like to see us getting more of the North American investment,” said McMillan, who was previously Saskatchewan’s energy and resources minister. “But as technology has unlocked shale, and now Mexico has opened up to private sector investment, we need to sharpen our pencils.”