A là The Perfect Storm, the bestseller and this summer's blockbuster movie, exploration editor Peggy Williams and photo editor Lowell Georgia helicoptered across the Atlantic, offshore Nova Scotia and Sable Island this summer to bring us this month's cover story, "Canada's Maritimes." Williams reports that Sable Island, long known as the "graveyard of the Atlantic," is the birthplace of a new industry: natural gas began flowing from a collection of offshore fields around the 44-kilometer-long sand bar last year. "Thebaud, North Triumph and Venture fields now produce more than 500 million cubic feet of raw gas per day." Traveling to western Canada this summer was senior financial editor Brian A. Toal, who tells us about Gwyn Morgan's plans for Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. In the past 25 years, the company has shed its forest product, coal, steel and petrochemical assets and focused more on growing its oil and gas base. Alberta is on its way to becoming a global super-independent, Morgan, president and chief executive, tells Toal, in "Long-Distance Runner." Meanwhile, contributing editor Sydney Sharpe was studying the Canadian energy mergers, divestitures and acquisitions market for her report, "Seeking Pearls," in this issue. "The merger marauders moved in quickly in the first six months of 2000, scooping Canadian energy companies so fast that the survivors and the overtaken are still bobbing in the wake," she writes. Our biannual list of upstream Canadian M&A deals follows her report. Offshore driller, Transocean Sedco Forex, fresh from doubling in size just last year, has been busy too, buying R&B Falcon in an $8.8-billion all-stock and debt-assumption deal. Associate editor Jodi Wetuski writes in "Two Down,..." that only the world's largest drilling contractor could have successfully negotiated a purchase of R&B Falcon. Wetuski also reports this month on the burgeoning energy e-procurement business. "With more and more energy Internet portals up and running, a growing number of operators and service companies are testing the waters of e-procurement and striking deals online. Their initial reactions have been quite enthusiastic, but they still have some questions and concerns about this emerging marketplace," she writes in "E-Help or E-Hype?" And Pontotoc Production Inc. has been busy. In its backyard in Ada, Oklahoma, the growing company has clocked nine consecutive profitable quarters since February 1998, writes editor Leslie Haines, in "Plying a New Niche." It has also doubled in size via drilling, workovers and eight acquisitions. "Perhaps most important to Pontotoc's growth plans, the company now is emphasizing shallow natural gas, even though traditionally its proved reserves have been about two-thirds oil." This is something many producers are doing and will be for many summers to come. -Nissa Darbonne, Managing Editor