Article content continued

If the investor day is meant to provide clarity on a company’s long-term strategy, achieving that goal for investors, amid the number of qualifiers that would have to be included given the number of undefined variables, would be difficult.

CNRL’s decision this week prompted plenty of discussion downtown, with much of the focus on the royalty review Premier Rachel Notley and her energy minister have promised will take place within six months and how the sector can avoid another round of unintended consequences.

Edwards and others have said the government should move ahead with the royalty review sooner rather than later to eliminate one level of uncertainty.

“We fully understand the government’s mandate to conduct a royalty review and we will work with them to understand the industry’s challenges and opportunities,” said Edwards.

Those challenges, according to a panel of experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Energy Visions event Thursday, are not insignificant.

“The thing that is going to affect the industry in the short term is going to be outside of Canada’s control and that’s going to be geopolitical risks in the Middle East,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard.

“In terms of what Canada might want to focus on … the fact this is the fifth oil price plunge in so many years leads one to believe ‘Oh I think it is just going to be like the other four’ in the sense that it is going to come back. But I think we are talking about some different fundamentals in the market, particularly with respect to the unconventionals and the shale oil and I think we need to think about what if this fifth price plunge is not like the other four.”