Canadian provinces are getting much less in exchange for the oil and gas they produce now than in the past despite growing production, a new report has revealed. Authored by veteran earth scientist David Hughes, Canada’s Energy Outlook says that provincial revenues from oil and gas have dropped considerably over the past four decades as governments choose to support production growth but give up proportionate returns. In Alberta, Canada’s top oil and gas producer, Hughes notes, oil royalty revenues fell from 80 percent of the total provincial revenues in 1979 to 3.3 percent in 2016. Over the same period, however, production of oil and gas doubled. The decline has been particularly marked since 2000, the report says, with the province’s 2016 oil and gas revenue down 90 percent from the 2005 level. In the country’s second-largest gas producer, British Columbia, the situation is pretty similar, with revenues from the […]