"The growing importance of natural gas will lead to a shift in investment priorities now involved only in oil-related areas have increased or most likely will increase their involvement in natural gas," said Ernst & Young.
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Upstream companies conducting exploration and production (E&P) activity in extreme environments such as the Arctic often need to develop or invest in new technologies. The added costs and difficulties or building, operating and maintaining infrastructures in these environments also increases risk; if commodity prices fall below a certain threshold, once-viable fields become uneconomical to produce. "As demand rises with limited reserves available, pursuing E&P in harsh or challenging environments may be the only way to significantly increased reserves, and therefore future revenues."

Read More:
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=100146
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Then I stumbled upon this from: National Energy Board

CSUG Conference

18 November 2009:

Most of the NEB's work is with pipelines, but public interest issues are similar for electricity transmission. Long distance transmission lines (such as those in Manitoba associated with the Lower Churchill project), whether they are regulated by the NEB or not, sometimes meet public opposition. Not-in-my-backyard concerns on long-distance electricity-transmission lines may favor gas turbines that can be sited close to markets, especially if the pipeline infrastructure is already in place to deliver that gas. Being closer to market would also reduce the costs and energy loss of having to deliver electricity over long distances.
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I like this very much:

Resulting low gas prices may go so far as to encourage fuel switching from other fossil-fuel sources, like coal. Other areas of demand growth are largely conceptual at the moment, but there are some advantages that natural gas has over other fuel types, especially when demand-management by policy makers is taken into consideration.

Market conditions for supply, demand and pipeline utilization will likely continue to evolve and innovative solutions will be required to adapt to changing circumstances. I cannot offer you solutions, but I can say this: an industry that manages to get natural gas out of shale likely has the brains to offer the market what it needs to meet energy demand.

I took it from NEB(National Energy Bord's presentation: "Unconventional Gas": Challenges For Pipelines and Markets.

Presented by
Lyne Mercier
Board Member

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The history of North American shale has been almost universally that any shale they find ends up producing.