Changing relationships between crude oil and natural gas prices?

Relationships between crude oil and natural gets prices in the field have long been obscured hy regulation, both in North America and Europe. ii? Canada, for example, for many years regulation explicitly linked the evolution of natural sets prices to that of crude oil prices. Deregulation in the 1980s in North America and latterly in Europe (albeit of a more subdued kind) has allowed and will continue to allow, the impact of market forces to emerge. We use Canadian field price data to examine the nature of relationships between crude oil and natural gas prices, how they evolved with deregulation, and what general inferences can he drawn from any patterns that are observed. Such analysis is intended to shed light on the important question of whether upstream markets for crude oil and natural gas have become more separable, with each being driven hp, different fundamentals, and thus acquiring a momentum more of its own.