I think you know this, but anyway:

And Dawson noted that the numbers will almost certainly grow higher, as the assessment doesn't include some plays that industry is only now beginning to tinker with.
June, 2010
New Opportunities

CSUG report pegs Canada's natural gas in place at almost 4,000 tcf

By Paul Wells

The potential prize just got a whole lot bigger as a study recently released by the Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas (CSUG) says that abundant shale and tight gas resources have dramatically changed the picture of Canada's gas potential.

The report includes both conventional and unconventional resources and concludes that Canada's natural gas in place resource is almost 4,000 trillion cubic feet (Tcf)-the marketable portion being between 700 and 1,300 Tcf-numbers CSUG president Mike Dawson said are truly staggering.

"The magnitude of these numbers may blow you away," Dawson said just prior to his presentation of the report's findings to an industry audience in Calgary. "We have an awful lot of natural gas potential lying within the country."

Of the estimated 700 to 1,300 Tcf of marketable gas, the CSUG report said 357 Tcf are conventional and between 376 (low case) and 947 Tcf (high case) are unconventional.

CSUG's low- and high-case projections of marketable resources are about two to four times higher than previous estimates.

In a 2006 report, the Canadian Gas Potential Committee determined that Canada's marketable gas resources were at 367 Tcf, about one-quarter of CSUG's updated numbers


"We have collectively over 100 years of natural gas resource potential, even at marketable and low-case [projections]," Dawson said.

"These resource numbers do not include the emerging [shale] plays...in the Duvernay, the Horn River extension up into the Northwest Territories, or the Liard Basin [in northeastern British Columbia, west of the Horn River play] for example. Those numbers have not been quantified, so they're not part of the assessment."

Other excluded plays included the Alberta Montney formation; the Devonian shales in the Mackenzie Valley corridor; the deep thermogenic Colorado group of shales in western Alberta; the St. Lawrence Lowlands, save for the part of Quebec's Utica shale where estimation methodologies could be identified and included; the Central Maritimes Basin, located predominately in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with an onshore component in New Brunswick and the southern tip of Newfoundland; and natural gas hydrates.

"This study doesn't address gas hydrates, and that's a whole different order of magnitude in terms of resource potential in the country," Dawson said.

The findings of the CSUG report mirror a similar undertaking conducted by the U.S. Potential Gas Committee, which in 2009 said that the Lower 48 states also have about a century's worth of gas supply-about 1,836 Tcf of technically recoverable natural gas resources.

Dawson said that during the past several years, the development and widespread deployment of a variety of horizontal drilling and companion reservoir stimulation technologies has demonstrated that vast additional natural gas resources within coal seams, tight gas reservoirs, and shales will play a major role in shaping Canada's long-term natural gas supply opportunity.

According to the report, Canada's gas-in-place estimates by resource type are: Conventional (692 Tcf), CBM (801 Tcf), tight gas (1,311 Tcf), and shale gas (1,111 Tcf).

The report said that the emerging nature of much of Canada's unconventional gas resource is reflected in the "broad range" of potential marketable gas. Broken down by resource type, the CSUG report estimates conventional marketable natural gas at 357 Tcf, coalbed methane (CBM) at between 34 and 129 Tcf, tight gas (including B.C.'s Montney play) in the 215 to 476 Tcf range, and shale gas at between 128 and 343 Tcf.

"In the past, numbers regarding Canada's [gas] resource potential have been skewed and all over the map," Dawson said. "As far as we know, this is the first time all these numbers have been put in one place. No question, these numbers are big."

Not surprisingly, Dawson noted that the new overall gas in place estimates show that the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is still Canada's lynchpin for resource potential.

"The lion's share of the resources still lie in the WCSB," he said, noting that of the estimated 692 Tcf of conventional gas in place, 482 Tcf are in western Canada.

"People think the basin is a bit tired and it's declining, which it is. But there's still tremendous potential there of conventional resources still available." To reach the estimates in its report, CSUG first commissioned Petrel Robertson

Consulting to prepare a report summarizing the range of assessments of Canada's natural gas resource base. Using the Petrel Robertson report, CSUG then estimated the total Canadian marketable gas resource, and the numbers it came up with-700 to 1,300 Tcf-"reflect the emergent nature" of many of Canada's unconventional resources.

Brad Hayes, president of Petrel Robertson, said his group focused on gas in place, as most reliable reports address this. However, predicting recovery and surface loss factors to come up with marketable gas reserves is difficult, and would add "considerable uncertainty and potential error" to the report.

"So CSUG took our results and produced estimates of marketable gas by applying these correction factors as consistently as possible across the board," he said.

Hayes said that most of the data Petrel Robertson used was generated by provincial regulatory agencies, the National Energy Board, and the Geological Survey of Canada, although tight gas and shale gas estimates came from more diverse sources.

"We tabulated conventional gas resources, shale gas, CBM, and tight gas separately. The conventional gas numbers are pretty tightly constrained-particularly in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin-but even elsewhere there's enough drilling to put some statistics behind the figures," he said.

"CBM figures have actually been generated by regulatory agencies in Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan and the Maritimes Basin. There could be some CBM in the Yukon, but it has not been assessed there. There are very few figures for shale gas and tight gas, as we are still struggling with being able to quantify these resources reliably and consistently."

As such, Petrel Robertson tabulated some broad volumetric estimates, but Hayes said the numbers that CSUG reported "are sums of those numbers only - there has been no reliable attempt to quantify shale gas resource potential in Ontario or in the North, and very little work on the Utica and other eastern trends."

"Similarly, there are tight gas values only for the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. There is likely substantial tight gas potential elsewhere, but we have no numbers yet."

For example, Hayes said Petrel Robertson just finished a report for the Northwest Territories Geoscience Office-a high-level scoping study of unconventional gas potential in the Northwest Territories.

"Nobody has produced any gas-in-place estimates for unconventional gas to date, but we listed several potential shale gas and tight gas plays that need additional work to understand. So there is a lot of shale gas and tight gas out there that nobody has tried to count yet, in addition to the values tabulated by Petrel Robertson and CSUG," Hayes said.

Besides establishing the wealth of natural gas in the country, Dawson said the report also illustrates that natural gas can be found from coast to coast and its benefits are just as far reaching.

"The natural gas industry is a significant contributor to the Canadian economy. With natural gas demand increasing in our country and around the world, our abundant supply positions all regions to benefit from responsible natural gas development," said Dawson.

However, although the CSUG report was positive in terms of natural gas resource potential in Canada, Dawson said challenges remain for the industry in Canada as it strives to remain competitive.

"There is a lot of competition from other sources in N orth America, most of them being south of the border with some of it coming with liquefied natural gas," he said.

"In order for western Canada to be competitive, companies are going to have to work very hard to drive down finding and development costs and ramp up and get improvement in terms of not only initial production rates that will allow them to pay off their wells more quickly, but also their ultimate recoverable gas from any given well."

http://www.oilandgasinquirer.com/printer.asp?article=profiler%2F100610%2FPRO2010_UA0002.html

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They continue to do more on infrastructure. You just told about TransAlta. I have just stumbled on this:

CALGARY, ALBERTA, Nov 10, 2010 (Marketwire via COMTEX) -- TransCanada Corporation (TSX:TRP) (NYSE:TRP) (TransCanada) will hold its annual Investor Day on Wednesday, November 17 in Toronto and Thursday, November 18 in New York.

Members of TransCanada's senior executive will discuss the company's $21 billion capital program and its outlook for growth. The discussion will highlight TransCanada's many large-scale, high-quality energy infrastructure projects that are expected to commence operations between 2011 and 2013.

The following senior executives will be speaking:

-- Russ Girling, President and Chief Executive Officer
-- Alex Pourbaix, President, Energy and Oil Pipelines
-- Greg Lohnes, President, Natural Gas Pipelines
-- Don Marchand, Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer
-- Don Wishart, Executive Vice-President, Operations and Major Projects




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Also Engridge builds pipeline. We just heard about Chevron and with this, remember India(I think), Obama has just been to India.

Maybe half the BRIC countries is with the west:) the BI. Well, I think alot of deals are being made. Alot of meetings, G-20 and so. The EU have just posted their energy plans. They have promissed to do something about CO2. They realise they cannot do it that fast and not as fast as they would have liked to. We could hope that they all realise now that NG is the only fast solution. It ramps up for NG?

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Just to show some of TransCanada pipeline holdings:

Some of TransCanadas pipelines, connected to quebec?:

Canadian Mainline

* 14,101 km (8,762 mi.).
* Extends from the Alberta/Saskatchewan border east to the Québec/Vermont border and connects with other natural gas pipelines in Canada and the U.S.
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Iroquois Gas Transmission System

* 666 km (414 mi.).
* Owned 44.5 per cent by TransCanada.
* Connects with the Canadian Mainline near Waddington, New York, and delivers natural gas to customers in the northeastern U.S.
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Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS)

* 474 km (295 mi.).
* Owned 61.7 per cent by TransCanada.
* Connects with TQM near East Hereford, Québec, and delivers natural gas to customers in the northeastern U.S.
* Operated by TransCanada.
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Trans Québec and Maritimes Pipeline (TQM)

* 572 km (355 mi.).
* Owned 50 per cent by TransCanada.
* Connects with the Canadian Mainline and transports natural gas from Montréal to Québec City in Québec, and connects with the Portland system.
* Operated by TransCanada.
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And they have more. I'l just post these also, to give an impression:


Foothills System

* 1,241 km (771 mi.).
* Carries natural gas for export from central Alberta to the U.S. border to serve markets in the U.S. Midwest, Pacific Northwest, California and Nevada.

* Visit Customer Express

ANR

* 17,000 km (10,563 mi.).
* Transports natural gas from primarily Texas and Oklahoma on its southwest leg and in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana on its southeast leg.
* System extends to markets located mainly in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. Also connects with other natural gas pipelines, providing access to diverse sources of North American supply.
* Also owns and operates regulated underground natural gas storage facilities in Michigan with a total capacity of 250 billion cubic feet (Bcf).