Canada provides a quarter of all the gas produced in Canada and the U.S..  Ninetyeight per cent of Canadian production comes from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), and almost all the rest from Atlantic Canada.

Since the year 2000, total Canadian production has been maintained at about 480 million cubic metres per day.  This has been achieved only by a very considerable increase in the number of wells drilled each year.  For details, see a posting I wrote in January.  It is evident that such increases cannot be continued indefinitely.  Under these circumstances, when drilling levels off, output begins to fall, and an actual decrease in drilling leads to even faster decline.  When gas prices were in the region of $15 per gigajoule in late 2005, there was considerable enthusiasm for drilling, but in the last year the price has wandered erratically in the range of $5 to $9 per gigajoule, and costs have been high. At $7 per gigajoule, drilling has been falling, and companies are laying workers off.