Below is the link to Mike's recent interview on BNN. I think the majority of questions are answered clearly which saves trawling through reams of speculation on various forums. It's apparant to me that despite the recent good news and (very welcome) jump in the share price, we still have to keep our feet firmly on the ground. For my part, this has already been a long wait, but there's still a very long way to go. Social acceptance is still a major issue. Raising capital for an aggresive drilling program is another. QEC is also relient on the decisions of its JV partner Repsol in the best plays. On the positive side, the passing of bill 106 is obviously a major milestone, oil & gas prices are on the rise, drilling technology is progressing and the company itself has matured. I'd love another ride back to the dizzy heights of 2008/2010 with a trailing stop/loss in place, but I'm curbing my enthusiasm as I believe the market is far more wary this time...

I'm heading off for a bit of Christmas sun in warmer climates. Wishing all on the forum a peaceful Christmas and (fingers crossed) a profitable QEC 2017.   

http://www.bnn.ca/commodities/video/commodities-for-monday-december-12-2016~1011009

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/questerre-energy-ceo-pitches-fracking-project-in-quebec/article21432034/?cmpid=rss1

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Despite lingering public skepticism toward shale gas development in Quebec, the head of the province’s oil and gas association is pitching preliminary plans for a home-grown gas production project he says could help prevent shortages.

“There is no doubt that Quebec pays a high price for natural gas – for their schools, for their hospitals, for their industry,” said Michael Binnion, chief executive of Calgary-based Questerre Energy Corp. and head of Quebec’s oil and gas lobby. “And that wasn’t as big a problem in the past as it is today. There are [usage] curtailments here every winter and there have been for 50 years.”

During a speech Monday to industry and government officials who were gathered for the Association pétrolière et gazière du Québec’s annual conference, Mr. Binnion presented his vision for a natural-gas production project in Quebec that could be tapped in spurts when required to meet the needs of local consumers and industry. He said it would be a small-scale project starting with some 10 wells drilled using hydraulic fracturing techniques and requiring a total of between $100-million and $200-million in investment. The wells would be set up in a non-urban community that supports the plan, he said.

The proposal highlights the extent to which Questerre and other non-conventional oil and gas developers remain active in thinking about how to breathe life into their industry in Quebec despite a nearly three-year moratorium on shale gas drilling and fracturing in the St. Lawrence River Valley. Questerre alone holds development rights to more than one million gross acres of farmland in the province.

“We have to show investors that production is possible here [in Quebec],” Mr. Binnion said. “This is one possible way for us to use local energy to solve a local energy problem.”

Quebec has enough natural gas to meet its own needs for an estimated 100 years or more, most of it concentrated in the province’s portion of the Utica shale formation along the southern flank of the St. Lawrence River. But it remains untapped after significant public opposition to early drilling efforts, forcing Quebec to buy its gas from producers in Western Canada. Unlike Ontario, the province has limited gas storage capacity. Mr. Binnion said his supply proposal is designed to replace the need for storage, since the wells could be tapped whenever gas is needed.

Past opinion polls have shown Quebeckers have among the lowest support for fracking of all Canadians. Mr. Binnion said Monday, however, that he believes the emotional intensity of the initial opposition to shale gas in Quebec has diminished.

The province imports more than five billion cubic metres of natural gas per year and consumption can double during the winter, said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, an energy specialist at Montreal’s HEC business school.

“It’s always hard to get enough natural gas during the winter, and it will become even harder in the context of TransCanada converting their natural-gas pipeline to an oil pipeline [with the Energy East project],” Mr. Pineau said. “So in this context, saying you can relieve the peak gas issue by having some marginal production during these periods, that makes a lot of sense.”

According to Quebec’s oil and gas association, natural gas represents 12 per cent of the province’s total energy consumption. About 130,000 households in the province use the resource, mostly for home heating and cooking. Industry, including a new $1.2-billion fertilizer project proposed by the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-Operative (IFFCO), is adding to demand pressure.

A government-mandated environmental agency is studying the safety and impact of natural-gas fracking in the St. Lawrence lowlands and its findings are due before the end of the year. Mr. Binnion cautioned that his vision for the project could change depending on what that report says.

Borrowed this link from 'Bombibitt' on the Hegnar forum. Interesting reading and obviously enormous potential implications for QEC. Fingers crossed...

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/04/28/the-future-of-fracking-rules-could-be-determined-this-week/

Any interest by the federal government in regulating the fracking boom across Canada could be determined by a landmark report to be released this week.

Ottawa has staked any requirement to regulate the game-changing petroleum extraction method on a study by the Council of Canadian Academies, an arm’s-length scientific advisory body the federal government sometimes turns to for independent advice.

The study, which the CCA says will be released on Thursday, won’t necessarily lead to increased regulation – its aim is to give Ottawa an overview of the scientific literature on fracking. But it could potentially impact the direction of the politically charged debate over fracking in some rural parts of Canada.

“The release of this report can either make people more or less uncertain about whether fracking is environmentally benign or not,” said Paul Boothe, a former deputy minister at Environment Canada. “If it is generally reassuring about fracking, about the state of knowledge and what that knowledge is, then that may reassure people in other parts of the country. The reverse could be true as well.”

Fracking, a nickname for an oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, has sparked violent protests in rural New Brunswick and moratoriums in Quebec and Nova Scotia. The method, which uses fluid to crack rock formations and release oil and gas, is also the backbone of British Columbia’s plans for a liquefied natural gas export industry.

While useful in extracting a number of unconventional petroleum resources, the one of principal interest in Canada is shale gas.

According to a Library of Parliament report from January, the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources has said Canada could have anywhere between 343 and 819 trillion cubic feet of marketable shale gas. The National Energy Board, in a report released last November, estimates the Montney shale formation in northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta, could have up 449 trillion cubic feet of marketable gas.

Most of the regulatory approvals for fracking are up to the provinces, including water usage permits and safety requirements over well design. But several aspects fall under federal legislation, hence Ottawa’s decision in 2012 to draw up a shale gas action plan and commission the CCA study.

Both the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), which regulates the use of toxic substances, and the Fisheries Act, which protects fisheries, are potentially impacted by fracking, according to a ministerial memo to then Environment Minister Peter Kent obtained by the Council of Canadians under an access-to-information request in 2013.

Also of interest to the federal government are greenhouse gas emissions from the shale gas industry, which Canada is obligated to curb under international agreements.

Under CEPA, the minister can demand operators who use a toxic substance to provide information on its properties and regulate their handling. A major issue among fracking opponents has been the disclosure of chemicals used in fracking fluid. CEPA has provisions that allow commercially sensitive information about these chemicals to remain secret to the public as long as they are disclosed to the regulator.

“That’s kind of the tension within the industry,” said Boothe, who left his government position in 2012 and is now a professor at the Ivey School of Business.

According to Boothe, Environment Canada was looking into whether to regulate fracking fluids under CEPA when he left his post.

Neither the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources nor the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the country’s largest oil and gas industry group, could say whether any member firms had been asked to provide fracking fluid information under CEPA.

“I can’t think of any,” said David Pryce, a vice-president of operations at CAPP.

The industry will have its own reasons for watching the CCA study this week. CAPP launched a series of standards on fracking around the same time Ottawa commissioned the study in 2012. All 100 or so members of CAPP have to agree to the guidelines, but this is the first year members have to report to CAPP about following the guidelines, said Pryce.

“At this stage, it’s generalized in the sense of ‘Are you using the practices, yes or no?’” he said. “At the same time, we are looking at the data around water usage – as an example – and we will be acquiring that information in subsequent years as well.”

Boothe, the former deputy environment minister, felt the CAPP guidelines fell short of what the federal rules demand.

“That was something of interest to the current government because they’re always looking at alternatives to direct regulation,” he said. “But it’s safe to say that the initial proposal by the industry fell short of where Environment Canada would have gone in terms of disclosure on the make-up of fracking liquids.”

Complicating matters is a provincial effort to have fracking fluids disclosed under a program called Fracfocus. Organized by the B.C. Oil & Gas Commission and using the same methodology as a similar program in the U.S., Fracfocus allows the public to look up fracking wells and read Material Safety Data Sheets (a standardized document that lists the fluid ingredients) for each well.

Currently, only B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories have signed up for Fracfocus, but New Brunswick may join soon, according to Pryce. CAPP’s guidelines, which don’t require the disclosure of chemicals, do require companies use Fracfocus, said Pryce.

If the jurisdiction doesn’t have Fracfocus, the member company must publicly disclose the Material Safety Data Sheets some other way, “whether it’s a website disclosure or some other vehicle,” he said.

SWN Resources Canada, whose fracking operations in New Brunswick sparked opposition from aboriginal communities living near their drill sites last fall, discloses a general list of fracking fluid ingredients online.

“Information on the drill fluid component materials and their Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) will be readily available at the site,” says the environmental impact assessment for SWN’s Bronson project site, posted to the government’s website.

The federal and provincial governments are undertaking a number of other studies on fracking, including the method’s impacts on seismicity and groundwater.

A new milestone... :-)

Calgary, Alberta -- Questerre Energy Corporation ("Questerre" or the "Company") (TSX,OSE:QEC) reported today that it has entered into an agreement with a subsidiary of Pembina Pipeline Corporation for 20 MMcf/d of natural gas and associated liquids processing at a new propane-plus (C3+) shallow cut gas plant located in the Kakwa-Resthaven area in west central Alberta.

Michael Binnion, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "This agreement is integral to develop our liquids-rich acreage in this area. It gives us the ability to ramp up our natural gas production to a minimum of 20 MMcf/d. More importantly this firm capacity allows us to extract our associated natural gas liquids for further processing and marketing. To date, these have averaged over 140 barrels per million cubic feet from our existing wells consisting primarily of high value condensate."

He further added, "We have taken a wellhead to burner tip approach to our market access strategy. Changes in North American liquids markets have made it essential for producers to secure key contracts for processing, transportation and marketing for all their product streams. For Questerre, these product streams include natural gas, natural gas liquids and condensate. This contract guarantees us processing capacity for our natural gas and liquids. We expect to conclude the remaining key transportation and marketing contracts for all product streams by the end of this year."

Through its participation in the planned expansion of an existing facility currently processing Questerre's gas and liquids in the area, the Company has secured capacity for 20 MMcf per day of raw natural gas production and associated liquids. The in-service date is scheduled for early to mid-2015 and is subject to receipt of regulatory and environmental approvals.

In conjunction with this contract the Company expects to conclude agreements for transportation, processing and marketing for the natural gas and liquids.

Questerre also updated the status of its fifth well in the area, the "05-23 Well". The vertical section of the well was successfully drilled, logged and cored. Drilling of the horizontal section is currently ongoing at a measured depth of approximately 4060m with a target measured depth of approximately 4900m. Questerre holds a 25% working interest in this well.

Questerre Energy Corporation is leveraging its expertise gained through early exposure to shale and other non-conventional reservoirs. The Company has base production and reserves in the tight oil Bakken/Torquay of southeast Saskatchewan. It is bringing on production from its lands in the heart of the high-liquids Montney shale fairway. It is a leader on social license to operate issues for its Utica shale gas discovery in the St. Lawrence Lowlands, Quebec. In conjunction with a supermajor, it is at the leading edge of commercializing a proven process to unlock the massive resource potential of oil shale.

Questerre is a believer that the future success of the oil and gas industry depends on a balance of economics, environment and society. We are committed to being transparent and are respectful that the public must be part of making the important choices for our energy future

Easter is a big deal over here... The Oslo exchange closed early last Wednesday and remained closed until today.

FYI. May is also a big month for bank holidays. The exchange will also be closed on May 1st , 9th, 17th and 20th.

My brother says I live in a nation of part time workers. ;-)

http://www.oslobors.no/ob_eng/Oslo-Boers/About-us/Opening-hours

Another brick falls into place... :-)

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Calgary, Alberta -- Questerre Energy Corporation ("Questerre" or the "Company") (TSX,OSE:QEC) updated the status of its wells in the Kakwa-Resthaven area of west central Alberta.