By: Alex Mlynek

On April 23 B.C. raised $39.6 million in its first monthly oil and gas rights sale of fiscal 2008-’09. The province raised $152 million in its March sale—its last in fiscal 2007-’08— but that was for more than three times as much land.

In addition to oil and gas rights sales news, a few other developments have occurred since I last wrote about this. On Monday, B.C. announced it will spend $5.7 million on efforts to collect data to help stimulate further investment in oil and gas. The plan is to particularly focus research on northeastern B.C.’s Horn River Basin, which has tremendous potential as a shale gas play. As well, new rules—the Oil and Gas Activities Act—will be coming down the pipeline to help regulate and facilitate B.C.’s expanding oil and gas industry.

Also, while it’s all gung ho on oil and gas development, yesterday, B.C. said a big no to uranium exploration and development—it doesn’t fit in with the province’s “no nuclear power” commitment. Looks like, for now, Saskatchewan will get to keep all of the hot rock fun for itself.