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About the only certainty for the Canadian oil and gas sector is that the number of known unknowns abounds.

Uncertainty has always been a hallmark of the oil industry and the current list of variables is led by particularly volatile crude prices, but also includes the review of oil and gas royalties in Alberta, Ottawa’s plan to roll out a national framework on climate change along with implementation of Alberta’s newly released GHG strategy, and the industry’s enduring concern over access to foreign markets.

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It was a second straight year of steep oil price declines in 2015 as crude slumped to its lowest levels since the global financial crisis in 2009 and added clarity may simply reaffirm the bleak outlook for the industry entering 2016.

With Canadian producers and drillers facing what’s been called “one of the most difficult economic times in a generation” significant change is needed — and already underway as the job losses will attest — to address the fundamentals of doing business in a high-cost basin in a low-price environment but there’s tremendous uncertainty over how companies will react and adapt.

Investment firm ARC Financial has calculated revenues for the oil and gas industry in Canada will be $91 billion in 2015 — or almost 40 per cent less than a year earlier.