Alberta
The Alberta energy transition you haven’t heard about

From the Canadian Energy Centre
Horizontal drilling technology and more investment in oil production have fundamentally changed the industry
There’s extensive discussion today about energy transition and transformation. Its primary focus is a transition from fossil fuels to lower-carbon energy sources.
But in Alberta, a fundamental but different energy transition has already taken place, and its ripple effects stretch into businesses and communities across the province.
The shift has affected the full spectrum of oil and gas activity: where production happens, how it’s done, who does it and what type of energy is produced.
Oil and gas development in Alberta today largely happens in different places and uses different technologies than 20 years ago. As a result, the companies that support activity and the communities where operations happen have had to change.
Regional Shift
For the first decade of this century, in terms of numbers of wells, most drilling activity happened in central and southeast Alberta, with companies primarily using vertical wells to target conventional shallow natural gas deposits.
In 2005, producers drilled more than 8,000 natural gas wells in these areas, according to Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) records.
But then, three things happened. The price of natural gas declined, the price of oil went up and new horizontal drilling technology unlocked vast energy resources that were previously uneconomic to produce.
By 2015, the amount of natural gas wells companies drilled in central and southeast Alberta was just 256. In 2023, the number dropped to only 50. Over approximately 20 years, activity dropped by 99 per cent.
Where did the investment capital go? The oil sands and heavy oil reserves of Alberta’s northeast and shale plays, including the Montney and Duvernay, in the province’s foothills and northwest.
Nearly 60 per cent of activity outside of the oil-rich northeast occurred in central and southeast Alberta in 2005. By 2023, overall oil and gas drilling in those regions had dropped by 30 per cent, while at the same time increasing by 159 per cent in the foothills and northwest.
“The migration of activity from central and southern Alberta to other regions of the province has been significant,” says David Yager, a longtime oil and gas service company executive who now works as a special advisor to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“For decades there were vibrant oil service communities in places like Medicine Hat, Taber, Brooks, Drumheller and Red Deer,” he says.
“These [oil service communities] have contracted materially with the new service centres growing in places like Lloydminster, Bonnyville, Rocky Mountain House, Edson, Whitecourt, Fox Creek and Grande Prairie.”
Fewer Wells and Fewer Rigs
Extended-reach horizontal drilling compared to shallow, vertical drilling enables more oil and gas production from fewer wells.
Outside the oil sands, in 2005, producers in Alberta drilled 17,300 wells. In 2023, that dropped to just 3,700 wells, according to AER data.
Despite that massive nearly 80 per cent decrease in wells drilled, total production of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids outside of the oil sands is essentially the same today as it was in 2005.
Last year, non-oil sands production was 3.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day, compared to 3.4 million boe per day in 2005–but from about 13,600 fewer new wells.
Innovation from drilling and energy services companies has been a major factor in achieving these impressive results, says Mark Scholz, CEO of the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors. But there’s been a downside.
Yager notes that much of the drilling and service equipment employed on conventional oil and gas development is not suited for unconventional resource exploitation.
Scholz says the productivity improvements resulted in an oversupply of rigs, especially rigs with limited depth ratings and limited capability for “pad” drilling, where multiple wells are drilled the same area on the surface.
Rigs have been required to drill significantly deeper wellbores than in the traditional shallow gas market, he says.
“This has resulted in rig decommissioning or relocations and a tactical effort to upgrade engines, mud pumps, walking systems and pipe-handling technology to meet evolving customer demands,” he says.
“You need not go beyond the reductions in Canada’s drilling rig fleet to understand the impact of these operational innovations. Twenty years ago, there were 950 drilling rigs; today, we have 350, a 65 per cent reduction. [And] further contractions are likely in the near term.”
Scholz says, “collaboration and partnerships between producers and contractors were necessary to make this transition successful, but the rig fleet has evolved into a much deeper, technologically advanced fleet.”
A Higher Cost of Entry
Yager says that along with growth in the oil sands, replacing thousands of new vertical shallow gas wells with fewer, high-volume extended-reach horizontal wells has made it more challenging for smaller companies to participate.
“The barriers to entry in terms of capital required have changed tremendously. At one time a new shallow gas well could be drilled and put on stream for $150,000. Today’s wells in unconventional plays cost from $3 million to $8 million each,” he says.
“This has materially changed the exploration and production companies developing the resource, and the type of oilfield services equipment employed. An industry that was once dominated by multiple smaller players is increasingly consolidating into fewer, larger entities. This has unintended consequences that are not well understood by the public.”
More Oil (Sands), Less Gas
Higher oil prices and horizontal drilling helped change Alberta from a natural gas hotbed to a global oil powerhouse.
In the oil sands, horizontal wells enabled a key technology called steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), which went into commercial service in 2001 to allow for a massive expansion of what is referred to as in situ oil sands production.
In 2005, mining dominated oil sands production, at about 625,000 barrels per day compared to 440,000 barrels per day from in situ projects. In situ oil sands production exceeded mining for the first time in 2013, at 1.1 million barrels per day compared to 975,000 barrels per day from mining.
Today the oil sands production split is nearly half and half. Last year, in situ projects–primarily SAGD–produced approximately 1.8 million barrels per day, compared to about 1.7 million barrels per day from mining.
Natural gas used to exceed oil production in Alberta. In 2005, natural gas provided 54 per cent of the province’s total oil and gas supply. Nearly two decades later, oil accounts for 60 per cent compared to 29 per cent from natural gas. The remaining approximately 11 per cent of production is natural gas liquids like propane, butane and ethane.
Alberta’s non-renewable resource revenue reflects the shift in activity to more oil sands and less natural gas.
In 2005, Alberta received $8.4 billion in natural gas royalties and $950 million from the oil sands. In 2023, the oil sands led by a wide margin, providing $16.9 billion in royalties compared to $3.6 billion from natural gas.
Innovation and Emerging Resources
As Alberta’s oil and gas industry continues to evolve, another shift is happening as investments increase into emissions reduction technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and emerging resources.
Since 2015, CCS projects in Alberta have safely stored more than 14 million tonnes of CO2 that would have otherwise been emitted to the atmosphere. And more CCS capacity is being developed.
Construction is underway on an $8.9-billion new net-zero plant producing polyethylene, the world’s most widely used plastic, that will capture and store CO2 emissions using the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line hub. Two additional CCS projects got the green light to proceed this summer.
Meanwhile, in 2023, producers spent $700 million on emerging resources including hydrogen, geothermal energy, helium and lithium. That’s more than double the $230 million invested in 2020, the first year the AER collected the data.
“Energy service contractors are on the frontlines of Canada’s energy evolution, helping develop new subsurface commodities such as lithium, heat from geothermal and helium,” Scholz says.
“The next level of innovation will be on the emission reduction front, and we see breakthroughs in electrification, batteries, bi-fuel engines and fuel-switching,” he says.
“The same level of collaboration between service providers and operators that we saw in our productivity improvement is required to achieve similar results with emission reduction technologies.”
Alberta
‘Far too serious for such uninformed, careless journalism’: Complaint filed against Globe and Mail article challenging Alberta’s gender surgery law

Macdonald Laurier Institute challenges Globe article on gender medicine
The complaint, now endorsed by 41 physicians, was filed in response to an article about Alberta’s law restricting gender surgery and hormones for minors.
On June 9, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute submitted a formal complaint to The Globe and Mail regarding its May 29 Morning Update by Danielle Groen, which reported on the Canadian Medical Association’s legal challenge to Alberta’s Bill 26.
Written by MLI Senior Fellow Mia Hughes and signed by 34 Canadian medical professionals at the time of submission to the Globe, the complaint stated that the Morning Update was misleading, ideologically slanted, and in violation the Globe’s own editorial standards of accuracy, fairness, and balance. It objected to the article’s repetition of discredited claims—that puberty blockers are reversible, that they “buy time to think,” and that denying access could lead to suicide—all assertions that have been thoroughly debunked in recent years.
Given the article’s reliance on the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the complaint detailed the collapse of WPATH’s credibility, citing unsealed discovery documents from an Alabama court case and the Cass Review’s conclusion that WPATH’s guidelines—and those based on them—lack developmental rigour. It also noted the newsletter’s failure to mention the growing international shift away from paediatric medical transition in countries such as the UK, Sweden, and Finland. MLI called for the article to be corrected and urged the Globe to uphold its commitment to balanced, evidence-based journalism on this critical issue.
On June 18, Globe and Mail Standards Editor Sandra Martin responded, defending the article as a brief summary that provided a variety of links to offer further context. However, the three Globe and Mail news stories linked to in the article likewise lacked the necessary balance and context. Martin also pointed to a Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) statement linked to in the newsletter. She argued it provided “sufficient context and qualification”—despite the fact that the CPS itself relies on WPATH’s discredited guidelines. Notwithstanding, Martin claimed the article met editorial standards and that brevity justified the lack of balance.
MLI responded that brevity does not excuse misinformation, particularly on a matter as serious as paediatric medical care, and reiterated the need for the Globe to address the scientific inaccuracies directly. MLI again called for the article to be corrected and for the unsupported suicide claim to be removed. As of this writing, the Globe has not responded.
Letter of complaint
June 9, 2025
To: The Globe and Mail
Attn: Sandra Martin, standards editor
CC: Caroline Alphonso, health editor; Mark Iype, deputy national editor and Alberta bureau chief
To the editors;
Your May 29 Morning Update: The Politics of Care by Danielle Groen, covering the Canadian Medical Association’s legal challenge to Alberta’s Bill 26, was misleading and ideologically slanted. It is journalistically irresponsible to report on contested medical claims as undisputed fact.
This issue is far too serious for such uninformed, careless journalism lacking vital perspectives and scientific context. At stake is the health and future of vulnerable children, and your reporting risks misleading parents into consenting to irreversible interventions based on misinformation.
According to The Globe and Mail’s own Journalistic Principles outlined in its Editorial Code of Conduct, the credibility of your reporting rests on “solid research, clear, intelligent writing, and maintaining a reputation for honesty, accuracy, fairness, balance and transparency.” Moreover, your principles go on to state that The Globe will “seek to provide reasonable accounts of competing views in any controversy.” The May 29 update violated these principles. There is, as I will show, a widely available body of scientific information that directly contests the claims and perspectives presented in your article. Yet this information is completely absent from your reporting.
The collapse of WPATH’s credibility
The article’s claim that Alberta’s law “falls well outside established medical practice” and could pose the “greatest threat” to transgender youth is both false and inflammatory. There is no global medical consensus on how to treat gender-distressed young people. In fact, in North America, guidelines are based on the Standards of Care developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)—an organization now indisputably shown to place ideology above evidence.
For example, in a U.S. legal case over Alabama’s youth transition ban, WPATH was forced to disclose over two million internal emails. These revealed the organization commissioned independent evidence reviews for its latest Standards of Care (SOC8)—then suppressed those reviews when they found overwhelmingly low-quality evidence. Yet WPATH proceeded to publish the SOC8 as if it were evidence-based. This is not science. It is fraudulent and unethical conduct.
These emails also showed Admiral Rachel Levine—then-assistant secretary for Health in the Biden administration—pressured WPATH to remove all lower age recommendations from the guidelines—not on scientific grounds, but to avoid undermining ongoing legal cases at the state level. This is politics, not sound medical practice.
The U.K.’s Cass Review, a major multi-year investigation, included a systematic review of the guidelines in gender medicine. A systematic review is considered the gold standard because it assesses and synthesizes all the available research in a field, thereby reducing bias and providing a large comprehensive set of data upon which to reach findings. The systematic review of gender medicine guidelines concluded that WPATH’s standards of care “lack developmental rigour” and should not be used as a basis for clinical practice. The Cass Review also exposed citation laundering where medical associations endlessly recycled weak evidence across interlocking guidelines to fabricate a false consensus. This led Cass to suggest that “the circularity of this approach may explain why there has been an apparent consensus on key areas of practice despite the evidence being poor.”
Countries like Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. have now abandoned WPATH and limited or halted medicalized youth transitions in favour of a therapy-first approach. In Norway, UKOM, an independent government health agency, has made similar recommendations. This shows the direction of global practice is moving away from WPATH’s medicalized approach—not toward it. As part of any serious effort to “provide reasonable accounts of competing views,” your reporting should acknowledge these developments.
Any journalist who cites WPATH as a credible authority on paediatric gender medicine—especially in the absence of contextualizing or competing views—signals a lack of due diligence and a fundamental misunderstanding of the field. It demonstrates that either no independent research was undertaken, or it was ignored despite your editorial standards.
Puberty blockers don’t ‘buy time’ and are not reversible
Your article repeats a widely debunked claim: that puberty blockers are a harmless pause to allow young people time to explore their identity. In fact, studies have consistently shown that between 98 per cent and 100 per cent of children placed on puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones. Before puberty blockers, most children desisted and reconciled with their birth sex during or after puberty. Now, virtually none do.
This strongly suggests that blocking puberty in fact prevents the natural resolution of gender distress. Therefore, the most accurate and up-to-date understanding is that puberty blockers function not as a pause, but as the first step in a treatment continuum involving irreversible cross-sex hormones. Indeed, a 2022 paper found that while puberty suppression had been “justified by claims that it was reversible … these claims are increasingly implausible.” Again, adherence to the Globe’s own editorial guidelines would require, at minimum, the acknowledgement of the above findings alongside the claims your May 29 article makes.
Moreover, it is categorically false to describe puberty blockers as “completely reversible.” Besides locking youth into a pathway of further medicalization, puberty blockers pose serious physical risks: loss of bone density, impaired sexual development, stunted fertility, and psychosocial harm from being developmentally out of sync with peers. There are no long-term safety studies. These drugs are being prescribed to children despite glaring gaps in our understanding of their long-term effects.
Given the Globe’s stated editorial commitment to principles such as “accuracy,” the crucial information from the studies linked above should be provided in any article discussing puberty blockers. At a bare minimum, in adherence to the Globe’s commitment to “balance,” this information should be included alongside the contentious and disputed claims the article makes that these treatments are reversible.
No proof of suicide prevention
The most irresponsible and dangerous claim in your article is that denying access to puberty blockers could lead to “depression, self-harm and suicide.” There is no robust evidence supporting this transition-or-suicide narrative, and in fact, the findings of the highest-quality study conducted to date found no evidence that puberty suppression reduces suicide risk.
Suicide is complex and attributing it to a single cause is not only false—it violates all established suicide reporting guidelines. Sensationalized claims like this risk creating contagion effects and fuelling panic. In the public interest, reporting on the topic of suicide must be held to the most rigorous standards, and provide the most high-quality and accurate information.
Euphemism hides medical harm
Your use of euphemistic language obscures the extreme nature of the medical interventions being performed in gender clinics. Calling double mastectomies for teenage girls “paediatric breast surgeries for gender-affirming reasons” sanitizes the medically unnecessary removal of a child’s healthy organs. Referring to phalloplasty and vaginoplasty as “gender-affirming surgeries on lower body parts” conceals the fact that these are extreme operations involving permanent disfigurement, high complication rates, and often requiring multiple revisions.
Honest journalism should not hide these facts behind comforting language. Your reporting denies youth, their parents, and the general public the necessary information to understand the nature of these interventions. Members of the general public rely greatly on the news media to equip them with such information, and your own editorial standards claim you will fulfill this core responsibility.
Your responsibility to the public
As a flagship Canadian news outlet, your responsibility is not to amplify activist messaging, but to report the truth with integrity. On a subject as medically and ethically fraught as paediatric gender medicine, accuracy is not optional. The public depends on you to scrutinize claims, not echo ideology. Parents may make irreversible decisions on behalf of their children based on the narratives you promote. When reporting is false or ideologically distorted, the cost is measured in real-world harm to some of our society’s most vulnerable young people.
I encourage the Globe and Mail to publish an updated version on this article in order to correct the public record with the relevant information discussed above, and to modify your reporting practices on this matter going forward—by meeting your own journalistic standards—so that the public receives balanced, correct, and reliable information on this vital topic.
Trustworthy journalism is a cornerstone of public health—and on the issue of paediatric gender medicine, the stakes could not be higher.
Sincerely,
Mia Hughes
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute
Author of The WPATH Files
The following 41 physicians have signed to endorse this letter:
Dr. Mike Ackermann, MD
Dr. Duncan Veasey, Psy MD
Dr. Rick Gibson, MD
Dr. Benjamin Turner, MD, FRCSC
Dr. J.N. Mahy, MD, FRCSC, FACS
Dr. Khai T. Phan, MD, CCFP
Dr. Martha Fulford, MD
Dr. J. Edward Les, MD, FRCPC
Dr. Darrell Palmer, MD, FRCPC
Dr. Jane Cassie, MD, FRCPC
Dr. David Lowen, MD, FCFP
Dr. Shawn Whatley, MD, FCFP (EM)
Dr. David Zitner, MD
Dr. Leonora Regenstreif, MD, CCFP(AM), FCFP
Dr. Gregory Chan, MD
Dr. Alanna Fitzpatrick, MD, FRCSC
Dr. Chris Millburn, MD, CCFP
Dr. Julie Curwin, MD, FRCPC
Dr. Roy Eappen, MD, MDCM, FRCP (c)
Dr. York N. Hsiang, MD, FRCSC
Dr. Dion Davidson, MD, FRCSC, FACS
Dr. Kevin Sclater, MD, CCFP (PC)
Dr. Theresa Szezepaniak, MB, ChB, DRCOG
Dr. Sofia Bayfield, MD, CCFP
Dr. Elizabeth Henry, MD, CCFP
Dr. Stephen Malthouse, MD
Dr. Darrell Hamm, MD, CCFP
Dr. Dale Classen, MD, FRCSC
Dr. Adam T. Gorner, MD, CCFP
Dr. Wesley B. Steed, MD
Dr. Timothy Ehmann, MD, FRCPC
Dr. Ryan Torrie, MD
Dr. Zachary Heinricks, MD, CCFP
Dr. Jessica Shintani, MD, CCFP
Dr. Mark D’Souza, MD, CCFP(EM), FCFP*
Dr. Joanne Sinai, MD, FRCPC*
Dr. Jane Batt, MD*
Dr. Brent McGrath, MD, FRCPC*
Dr. Leslie MacMillan MD FRCPC (emeritus)*
Dr. Ian Mitchell, MD, FRCPC*
Dr. John Cunnington, MD
*Indicates physician who signed following the letter’s June 9 submission to the Globe and Mail, but in advance of this letter being published on the MLI website.
Alberta
COWBOY UP! Pierre Poilievre Promises to Fight for Oil and Gas, a Stronger Military and the Interests of Western Canada

Fr0m Energy Now
As Calgarians take a break from the incessant news of tariff threat deadlines and global economic challenges to celebrate the annual Stampede, Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre gave them even more to celebrate.
Poilievre returned to Calgary, his hometown, to outline his plan to amplify the legitimate demands of Western Canada and not only fight for oil and gas, but also fight for the interests of farmers, for low taxes, for decentralization, a stronger military and a smaller federal government.
Speaking at the annual Conservative party BBQ at Heritage Park in Calgary (a place Poilievre often visited on school trips growing up), he was reminded of the challenges his family experienced during the years when Trudeau senior was Prime Minister and the disastrous effect of his economic policies.
“I was born in ’79,” Poilievre said. “and only a few years later, Pierre Elliott Trudeau would attack our province with the National Energy Program. There are still a few that remember it. At the same time, he hammered the entire country with money printing deficits that gave us the worst inflation and interest rates in our history. Our family actually lost our home, and we had to scrimp and save and get help from extended family in order to get our little place in Shaughnessy, which my mother still lives in.”
This very personal story resonated with many in the crowd who are now experiencing an affordability crisis that leaves families struggling and young adults unable to afford their first house or condo. Poilievre said that the experience was a powerful motivator for his entry into politics. He wasted no time in proposing a solution – build alliances with other provinces with mutual interests, and he emphasized the importance of advocating for provincial needs.
“Let’s build an alliance with British Columbians who want to ship liquefied natural gas out of the Pacific Coast to Asia, and with Saskatchewanians, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who want to develop their oil and gas and aren’t interested in having anyone in Ottawa cap how much they can produce. Let’s build alliances with Manitobans who want to ship oil in the port of Churchill… with Quebec and other provinces that want to decentralize our country and get Ottawa out of our business so that provinces and people can make their own decisions.”
Poilievre heavily criticized the federal government’s spending and policies of the last decade, including the increase in government costs, and he highlighted the negative impact of those policies on economic stability and warned of the dangers of high inflation and debt. He advocated strongly for a free-market economy, advocating for less government intervention, where businesses compete to impress customers rather than impress politicians. He also addressed the decade-long practice of blocking and then subsidizing certain industries. Poilievre referred to a famous quote from Ronald Reagan as the modus operandi of the current federal regime.
“The Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If anything moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
The practice of blocking and then subsidizing is merely a ploy to grab power, according to Poilievre, making industry far too reliant on government control.
“By blocking you from doing something and then making you ask the government to help you do it, it makes you reliant. It puts them at the center of all power, and that is their mission…a full government takeover of our economy. There’s a core difference between an economy controlled by the government and one controlled by the free market. Businesses have to clamour to please politicians and bureaucrats. In a free market (which we favour), businesses clamour to impress customers. The idea is to put people in charge of their economic lives by letting them have free exchange of work for wages, product for payment and investment for interest.”
Poilievre also said he plans to oppose any ban on gas-powered vehicles, saying, “You should be in the driver’s seat and have the freedom to decide.” This is in reference to the Trudeau-era plan to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, which the Carney government has said they have no intention to change, even though automakers are indicating that the targets cannot be met. He also intends to oppose the Industrial Carbon tax, Bill C-69 the Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-48 the Oil tanker ban, the proposed emissions cap which will cap energy production, as well as the single-use plastics ban and Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act and the proposed “Online Harms Act,” also known as Bill C-63. Poilievre closed with rallying thoughts that had a distinctive Western flavour.
“Fighting for these values is never easy. Change, as we’ve seen, is not easy. Nothing worth doing is easy… Making Alberta was hard. Making Canada, the country we love, was even harder. But we don’t back down, and we don’t run away. When things get hard, we dust ourselves off, we get back in the saddle, and we gallop forward to the fight.”
Cowboy up, Mr. Poilievre.
Maureen McCall is an energy professional who writes on issues affecting the energy industry.
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