At a November 11 conference, "Canadian-Northeast Energy Trade: New Issues and Challenges," sponsored by the New England-Canada Business Council, Commissioner Donald F. Santa, Jr. of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) declared the natural gas border wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s "over." He heralded an increasingly integrated North American natural gas market, stemming from looser regulation in the United States and Canada, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and completion of substantial crossborder pipeline capacity.
Santa identified the electric generation market, and the nonutility generator (NUG) market in particular, as a growth area for Canadian natural gas and for the gas industry in general. He noted that Energy Information Administration data shows that almost 80 percent of long-term contracts for the sale of Canadian gas to NUGs involve generators located in the northeast United States.