Positions Available: 3 students

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential for Canadian natural gas production, consumption, and export. Canada has the lowest natural gas price in the world. Whereas, so far, it is exporting natural gas only to the US through pipelines. Although an LNG plant is now under construction, there is no certainty on how much natural gas Canada will be able to produce and export. The specific question to be asked are:

The objectives of this project are to: (1) identify the reasons for Canada's inability to enter the world natural gas market, (2) discover competitive advantage for Canadian natural gas export to different parts of the world, (3) examine the potential for Canadian natural gas export under different scenarios, and (4) recommend policy frameworks for maximum return from Canadian natural gas sector.

Methods:

This project is to be executed using the secondary data. At the first stage, this project will collect secondary data and relevant literature. The source of secondary data are the websites of Natural Resource Canada, Statistics Canada, British Petroleum, International Energy Association, International Gas Union, International Energy Agency, Energy Information Agency (USA).

Data reported in these sources are not in the same form or format, neither all are in spreadsheets. This requires substantial effort to convert to a common spreadsheet software [we plan to compile all in MS-Excel]. In addition, they are not in the same units nor are in the same variables nor have the same characteristics. These data will need to be transformed, corroborated, and synthesized to create a set of consistent workable data for analytical purposes.

The other major component is to review literature, prepare a bibliography, write a review on methods, procedures, and results. We expect three students to work individually or in sequence.

Data gathering – 40 hours

Data manipulation [synchronizing] – 40 hours

Literature search – 30 hours

Preparing an annotated bibliography – 50 hours

Computing simple statistics and graphs – 20 hours

Writing review – 60 hours

Qualifications of Student Research Assistant – preferably an advanced senior student in Economics or Statistics with sufficient understanding of (1) data downloading from internet sites, (2) data conversion, manipulation, and processing in Excel, (3) collection of relevant literature, development of annotated bibliography, and (4) writing review of methods, procedures, and results.

Dr. Islam will directly be in touch with students - offer mentorship and supervision throughout the project. The students will have opportunity to communicate in different modes [email, telephone, video-conferencing, etc.].