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“At this stage, unfortunately, we don’t really know where things are going to be six months from now and I think that is leading to additional uncertainty in a market that probably doesn’t need it right now.”

The new NDP government has vowed to review the province’s royalty system within the next six months.

In January, the CAODC estimated 22,579 jobs would be lost this year as 6,612 wells are drilled, a 43 per cent drop from last year. It calculates the number of jobs by multiplying by an average of 135 jobs per rig.

On Monday, it predicted a total of 5,531 wells this year, about 49 per cent of the 11,226 wells actually drilled last year. It figures the average number of rigs working this year at 184 out of a fleet of 768 or about 24 per cent.

The slowdown can be seen in Alberta Energy’s auctions of non-oilsands oil and gas drilling rights, a key indicator of future activity. In 10 sales so far this year, the treasury has raised $136 million, versus $206 million in the same period last year. In what turned out to be the record-setting year of 2011, the government brought in $1.74 billion through the first 10 sales.

In an oilfield services report last week, Calgary investment bank Peters & Co. said it expects Canadian drilling activity to decline compared with 2014 in every quarter of this year, reaching a trough in the first quarter of 2016.

It said the situation is worse than in the last downturn in 2009.

“From September until May, oil price and equity weakness tracked largely in line with the pullback of 2008-09, although valuations did not compress to the same magnitude,” says the report.