The era of the dominance of the Canadian energy trusts is drawing to a close just as a similar E&P regime in the U.S. gets under way. The Canadian government is ending tax breaks on trusts. The news from north of the border has been bad for U.S. and other investors in the trusts-they've seen their unit values fall up to 20% since the new tax plan was announced November 1. However, it may be a boon to the new U.S. upstream master limited partnerships (MLPs) that have gone public this year and those that are in the drawing room. Money that had chased the tax-free Canadian trusts' distributions may turn its attention now to that of these U.S. platforms instead. Publicly traded U.S. E&P MLPs to date are Linn Energy, EV Energy Partners and BreitBurn Energy Partners. (For more details on the lattermost, see "The BreitBurn Model" in this issue.) In the drafting room are sponsored by Constellation Energy and Exco Resources. For more on this, see the November issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.

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