Canada's junior oil and gas companies are running up the down escalator. It wouldn't be right to say they're on a race track, because crude oil and natural gas production decline naturally by 20-30 per cent per year, so the ground is actually moving in the opposite direction beneath them. And it wouldn't be right to say they're on a treadmill, because progress is, in fact, possiblewith the right push, people and prospects.But the reality is that the downward pressure on production is so powerful in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin that most publicly traded junior oil and gas companies have been unable to increase their production on a per share basis. You read that right. Even though conventional wisdom is that growth is only sustainable if a company's production rises faster than its number of shares outstanding, most junior explorers and producers that operate in western Canada have been unable to grow their production, quarter after quarter, without diluting investors. Fortunately, small oil and gas companies are not meant to be sustainable.
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