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Investor confidence in Alberta falling: Fraser Institute

Amid pipeline rejections, a new carbon tax and a yet to be released royalty review investor confidence in Alberta is sliding.

The Fraser Institute released its Policy Perception Index Wednesday noting that Alberta slid from 16th to 38th in investor confidence from 2014 to 2015.

“Alberta remains one of the most favoured destinations in the world for oil and gas development investment,” noted the report authored by Ross McKitrick and Kenneth Green. “But new uncertainty about policy directions has caused the province’s reputation to slide dramatically in less than a year, and this should raise red flags for the provincial government.”

The Wildrose province dropped from third place in Canada in 2014 to seventh in 2015.

One of the possible reasons for the massive slide according to the report is the refusal of the US administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, that along with uncertainty over the Northern Gateway pipeline and the Trans Mountain expansion project.

“The Notley government can’t be blamed for the collapse in the world price of oil,” said the report. “But if that was the only problem, Alberta would not have fallen so far relative to everyone else since the rest of the world is also contending with slumping revenues. The issue is the timing of a series of potentially punitive rule changes for an industry already grappling with a global revenue shock. This is not attributable to external events; it is a made-in-Alberta problem.”

The full report can be found here.