President of the Grande Prairie Petroleum Association Rob Petrone speaking at the Support Oil and Gas Rally on December 16, 2018

By Justin Dionne

Oil and Gas

Oil and gas industry looking forward to positive change with UCP Government

Apr 18, 2019 | 12:14 PM

With the United Conservatives coming into power in Alberta, workers in the oil and gas industry are expecting positive changes to be on the way.

President of the Grande Prairie Petroleum Association Rob Petrone says a UCP government should create more stability for the industry which oil and gas experts say will restore investor confidence.

“The general consensus is it’s a step in the right direction. It’s good, now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and go to work,” says Petrone. “There’s a lot of work ahead of us. From an industry standpoint, we operate well under certain times, but when there’s high levels of uncertainty, it makes it tough to commit to huge capital dollars because it’s just not there.”

Some of the work Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives are expected to undergo includes Kenney challenging the carbon tax and getting pipelines built to get Canadian product to the international market.

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Petrone says based on the platform the UCP ran, the industry is looking forward to positive change in the future, but those changes may not be seen immediately.

“It’s going to take a little while to turn this around. I can think back to the eighties when a similar situation happened. It took five or six years to turn things around and get that investor confidence back. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but it’s a step in the right direction, no doubt about it, and if we can get some of these policies changed and access to market, streamline our approval processes to invest capital and attract those capital dollars, that’s good for everybody. Not just in the province, but in the country.”

Petrone is hopeful the federal election this fall will bring further positive change to oil and gas.

He adds the industry is looking forward to working with the province to make it more prosperous.