1 For graphic illustrations of this tendency see the following National Energy Board publications: Report to the Governor in Council (Ottawa. August 1970), 3–23Google Scholar: Canadian Natural Gas: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa. April 1975), 3. 4, 49, 50Google Scholar: Canadian Oil: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa, February 1977), 9–10Google Scholar: Reasons for Decision: Northern Pipelines Vol. 2 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada. July 1977). 59, 81;Google ScholarCanadian Oil: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, September 1978), 69, 148-50: Canadian Energy Supply and Demand. 1980–2000 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1981). 34. 38. 46. 51. 71. 73. 87. 92.Google Scholar

2 Such wide variability is not limited to the Canadian forecasts discussed here. See Brodman, J. R. and Hamilton, R. E, A Comparison of Energy Projections to 1985 (IEA Monograph No. 1; Paris: International Energy Agency, January 1979)Google Scholar, for a presentation and discussion of 78 international energy supply and demand forecasts which also illustrate great variability.

3 The obvious self-perpetuating nature of this process is what has prompted several commentators to describe energy forecasts as self-fulfilling prophecies. See, for example, Daly, Herman, “Energy Demand Forecasting: Prediction or Planning?” AIP Journal (1976), 4–15.Google Scholar Such a description, however, overlooks the (fortunate) fact that forecasts are often wrong.

4 Because of the closely intertwined nature of federal oil and natural gas policy, it is not meaningful to discuss only the latter.

5 For a more extensive discussion of the history of Canadian oil policy see Debanne, J. G., “Oil and Canadian Policy,” in Erickson, Edward W and Waverman, Leonard (eds.). The Energy Question, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974).Google Scholar

6 For a fullerdiscussionofthe development and export-orientation of Canadian natural gas policy, see Bregha, Francois, “Canadian Natural Gas Policy: A Critique.” unpublished paper, Faculty of Environmental Studies. York University. 1975Google Scholar: and McDougall, Ian, “The Canadian National Energy Board: Economic Jurisprudence in the National Interest or Symbolic Reassurance?” Alberta Law Review 11 (1973). 329-38.Google Scholar

7 Under the National Energy Board Act, any approval by the Board is subject to approval by the Governor in Council, but any refusal is final.

8 Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, “Press Release,” September 29, 1970.

9 National Energy Board, Report to the Governor in Council (Ottawa, August 1970), 10–11.Google Scholar

10 Quoted in North, F. K., “Guarding Our Oil and Gas Reserves,“ Calgary Herald, November 28, 1972, 5.Google Scholar

11 National Energy Board, Reasons for Decision (Ottawa, November 1971), 6–4.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 6-11.

13 Ibid., 6-2.

14 Data from Oilweek, February 13, 1978. It is worth noting that much of the 1972 increase was in development drilling.

15 For a discussion of the history of the pipeline question, see Francois Bregha, “Canadian Natural Gas Policy: A Critique,” and John B. Robinson, “Policy, Pipelines and Public Participation: The National Energy Board's Northern Pipeline Hearings,” in Dwivedi, O. P (ed.), Resources and the Environment: Policy Perspectives for Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980).Google Scholar

16 Dosman, E. J., The National Interest: The Politics of Northern Development, 1968-75 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), 66.Google Scholar

17 Gibson, Robert, “Energy Policy and the North: Decision Making on the Mackenzie Pipeline,” unpublished paper, University of Toronto, 1977, 7–10.Google Scholar

18 By January 1974, four other federal cabinet ministers, including the prime minister, had also publicly endorsed a Mackenzie Valley pipeline.

19 National Energy Board, Potential Limitations of Canadian Petroleum Supplies (Ottawa: December 1972), 19.Google Scholar

20 Canadian Arctic Gas Study Group Limited, “Why Canada Needs the Arctic Gas Pipeline,” Profile No. 1, October 3, 1973, 1.

21 National Energy Board, Canadian Natural Gas: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa: February 1975), i.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 91.

23 Crowe, as a representative of the Canadian Development Corporation, had been a member of the management committee of the Gas Arctic-Northwest Project Study Group, the parent organization of Arctic Gas, from October 30, 1972, until his appointment to the National Energy Board on October 15, 1973.

24 This proposal, which would carry only American gas from Prudhoe Bay along the Alaska Highway, through the Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta to the United States, was proposed by Foothills because there had not been enough gas found in the Mackenzie Delta to justify their original “Maple Leaf” (all-Canadian) pipeline proposal.

25 Energy, , Mines and Resources Canada, An Energy Strategy for Canada (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1976)Google Scholar. The first report, An Energy Policy for Canada: Phase I (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973)Google Scholar, had been published three years earlier. It had contained much more optimistic forecasts than those which appeared in 1976.

26 Energy, , Mines and Resources Canada, An Energy Strategy for Canada (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1976), 140.Google Scholar

27 McNabb, G. M., “The Canadian Energy Situation in 1990” (speech prepared for the Third Canadian National Energy Forum, Halifax, April 4, 1977), 14.Google Scholar

28 National Energy Board, Canadian Natural Gas: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, February 1979), 4.Google Scholar

29 National Energy Board, Reasons for Decision (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, November 1979).Google Scholar

30 National Energy Board, Canadian Energy Supply and Demand, 1980–2000 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1981), iii.Google Scholar

31 Government of Canada, The National Energy Program (Ottawa: Department of Energy, Mines and Resources. 1980), 53–61.Google Scholar

32 Latimer, R. R., “Prices and Markets will Determine Canada's Gas Supplies” (speech given to the International Association of Energy Economists, Toronto. June 23,1981).Google Scholar

33 During the 1970s a significant change occurred in the manner in which estimates of energy resources were prepared in Canada. Over that period the traditional “volumetric” method of estimation, which involved multiplying the estimated volume of sedimentary rock by the expected oil and gas yield of the sediment (the expectations being derived from other similar sedimentary basins that were better explored), began to be replaced by the more sophisticated “probability-play” method, which involved estimates by petroleum geologists of probability distributions for oil and gas on a play-by-play basis, using the results of drilling and seismic tests. See Energy, , Mines and Resources Canada, Oil and Natural Gas Resources of Canada, 1976 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977)Google Scholar. Since, as indicated below, it is reserve and not resource estimates that serve as the basis of the supply forecasts used by the government to justify export and pipeline decisions, this change has not had a major bearing on the energy supply forecasts described in this article.

34 National Energy Board, Report to the Governor in Council (Ottawa, August 1970), and Reasons for Decision (Ottawa, November 1971).Google Scholar

35 National Energy Board, Canadian Natural Gas: Supply and Requirements (Ottawa, April 1975).Google Scholar

36 Good examples of this can be found in the range of supply forecasts submitted to most National Energy Board hearings, all of which have been prepared on the basis of standard terms of reference specified by the board in advance of the hearing.

37 Robinson, John B., “Bottom-up Methods and Low-down Results: Changes in the Estimation of Future Energy Demands,“ Energy: The International Journal 7 (1982). 627–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Ibid.

6 Marshall, Elliot, “Energy Forecasts: Sinking to New Lows,“ Science 208 (1980), 1353-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Robinson, John B, “Bottom-up Methods and Low-down Results.” See also, National Academy of Sciences, Alternative Energy Demand Futures to 2010 (San Francisco: Freeman, W. H., 1979), 33.Google Scholar

41 The points made in the rest of this and the next section are elaborated upon in Robinson, John B, “Backing into the Future: On the Methodological and Institutional Biases Embedded in Energy Supply and Demand Forecasting,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 21 (1982), 229-40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Ascher, William, Forecasting: An Appraisal for Policy-Makers and Planners (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 199.Google Scholar

43 McLean, Mick, “Getting the Problems Right–A Role for Structural Modelling,” in Linstone, Harold and Simmonds, W. H. (eds.), Futures Research: New Directions (Don Mills: Addison-Wesley, 1977)Google Scholar. See also Boulding's, Kenneth comments in the National Academy of Sciences Energy in Transition (San Francisco: Freeman, W. H., 1979), 616.Google Scholar

44 Just, James and Lave, Lester, “Review of Scenarios of Future U.S. Energy Use,“ Annual Review of Energy 4 (1979), 533CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Linstone, Harold, “Confessions of a Forecaster,“ in Linstone, Harold and Simmonds, W. H. (eds.), Futures Research: New Directions, 11,44Google Scholar. For discussions of the concerns raised by the increasing use of mathematical models in forecasting, see Koreisha, Sergio and Stobaugh, Robert, “Appendix: Limits to Models,“ in Stobaugh, Robert and Yergin, Daniel(eds.), Energy Future (New York: Random House, 1979)Google Scholar, and Sachs, Vladimir, “Some Thoughts on the Mathematical Method and Futures Problems,“ in Simmonds, Linstone (eds.), Futures Research: New Directions.Google Scholar

45 Armstrong, J. S., “The Seer-Sucker Theory: The Value of Experts in Forecasting,“ Technology Review 83 (1980), 18–24.Google Scholar

46 Hooker, Cliff and van Hulst, R., “Institutions, Counter-Institutions and the Conceptual Framework of Energy Policy Making in Ontario,“ report prepared forthe Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, Toronto, May 1977, 47.Google Scholar

47 Lucas, Alastair and Bell, Trevor, The National Energy Board: Policy, Procedure and Practice, report prepared for the Law Reform Commission of Canada (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977), 40.Google Scholar

48 See, for example, Energy, , Mines and Resources Canada, Energy Demand Projections–A Total Energy Approach (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada. 1977). 1.Google Scholar

49 Daly, Berman, “Energy Demand Forecasting: Prediction or Planning?” 4-15. and “On Thinking About Energy in the Future,” Natural Resources Forum 3 (1978), 27–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Such scenario forecasting is no novelty to energy forecasters themselves. See, for example, Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, Energy Demand Projections-A Total Energy Approach, for a good discussion of energy demand forecasting based on such an approach. However, it has rarely been used by energy policy-makers.

51 For more on the background, methods and potential uses of energy backcasting see Robinson, J. B., “Energy Backcasting: A Proposed Method of Policy Analysis,” Energy Policy 10 (1982), 337-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Energy, , Mines and Resources Canada, The National Energy Program (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1980), 65.Google Scholar