Some investors who withdrew from the oil and gas sector in recent years have started to return. Among them is the wealth portfolio manager in Calgary, Martin Pelletier, who said that his company exited the oil and gas sector due to the substantial loss it incurred in 2015, before returning about a year and a half ago. Pelletier added that he was partially influenced by the rebound in oil prices and what he described as a "risky" supply situation. Currently, huge profits and renewed interest in energy security due to the war in Ukraine are the two biggest reasons for the renewed interest of investors, after several years of weak financial returns and growing concerns about climate change. Jeremy Macrea, managing director of energy research at Raymond James, also said: "Any investor who did not participate in the race here in the oil and gas field... will miss the opportunity." To date, Cenovus shares have risen by about 50 percent, Canadian Natural Resources shares have increased by 37 percent, while Suncor shares have risen by about 34 percent. In comparison, the S&P/TSX composite index has fallen by nearly 12 percent. Also, Michael Tims, vice president of Matco Investments Ltd., said that this year marked a change from a long period of "recession" following the oil collapse in 2014, which was punctuated by a sharp drop in prices during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. He continued: "By June 2022, we had not fully returned to the 2014 peaks, but we have definitely surpassed the levels of all the years from 2015 until now." Since June, Tims indicated that energy inventories have slightly declined, and the difference is that the sector has long been out of step with the rest of the market. Part of what makes the current moment different from previous boom times is that while companies enjoy their stock prices, they generally are not pumping a lot of money into capital expansion. Instead, Tims said many exploration and production companies are expected to earn about three and a half times the cash they plan to spend on capital. In the same context, Macrea said that oil producers might hesitate to spend years developing a new project when the federal government, for example, wants all cars sold by 2035 to be emission-free, adding: "There are many opposing regulatory factors that make each producer largely unwilling to expand their spending programs to increase production. As a result, your profits actually increase slightly, which can then be converted back into dividends and buybacks and frankly, this is somewhat what many of these investors are looking for here." The International Energy Agency also stated last year that there are no possible new oil and gas fields or coal mines if the world is to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.