However, the investment landscape in the US remains strong as it does in Canada, which also slid, going from second spot to eighth.

The drop in these two strong coal and hydrocarbon producing countries is more due to the rise in European jurisdictions due to an EU mandate to solve its raw materials crisis.

The same is the case for Australia, which dropped out of the Survey’s top 10 for the first time since 2010 despite improving its scores across all categories.

In the jurisdictional breakdown, coal producer Queensland dropped to below Victoria, which is saying something; that investors and companies are clearly concerned about the uncertainty around the state’s ongoing process of consolidating five resources-related acts into one.

Canadian provinces Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and Saskatchewan all rated higher before South Australia put Australia on the board, topping Australia’s states and territories now since 2010.

Back to North America, and Rodney Ruston, CEO of ASX-listed County Coal, has a very dim view of US President Barack Obama and his mining policies.

County Coal is developing a North American bulk export solution that can be used for County’s US coal projects, as well as other projects looking to export coal from the US and Canada.

“There is a lot of negativity in the US about the way Obama is managing the place,” Ruston told International Coal News’ sister publication RESOURCESTOCKS.

“It’s just getting harder and harder to get anything approved, because he’s anti-mining in general but is particularly anti-coal.”

But Obama “loves gas”, Ruston said, and “anything anyone has in gas won’t be a problem”

Despite all this, Control Risks managing director (Australia Pacific) Jason Rance said the investment landscape in the US in 2014 was better than it had been for years.

“We are as far as possible from presidential election uncertainty, the economy is growing robustly, key macro risks have receded, the political will for major new regulation is non-existent, and policymakers remain favourably disposed to extractives, with a weather eye on large-scale exports in the near future – Ukraine adding a bit of political will,” Rance told RESOURCESTOCKS.

“The only clear reason why the US might have slipped is that the Obama administration in 2014 embarked on a unilateral campaign to implement climate change policy through executive action.

“The primary target is coal-fired power plants – which has dented sentiment for both power producers and coal miners – but the regulatory push has also hit more broadly, with moves to mandate disclosure of fraccing fluid composition.

“State level regulation of fraccing is much more important, and a mixed bag: some states are full steam ahead, others are placing constraints. On aggregate, the overall environment remains very favourable to the unconventional oil and gas industry.

“Another possible reason is the persistent political dysfunction in Congress – but it’s been like that since 2011.”

Former Patersons energy analyst Alexis Clark, CEO of American Patriot, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in July with assets in the Rocky Mountain basins onshore US, said infrastructure was the big advantage in the US, with 70% of the world’s onshore rig supplies there, including those used in horizontal drilling, which are needed for shale exploitation.

The company’s relatively early entry into onshore US tight oil provides a cheap entry point into old carbonate fields.

“They were the ones who developed this industry,” Clark said of the US shale industry, especially around hydraulic fracturing.

“They have all the pipeline, railroad infrastructure to transport the oil, plus the landowner incentive scheme. Landowners own the resource, so are incentivised to develop the resources as opposed to being locked up in government approvals.”

Ruston said that, in contrast to Obama, Canada’s Harper government has “always been very positive on getting the right balance between environmental activity and allowing mining to go ahead”

While there have been no major step changes in Canada’s business or regulatory environments in 2014, Rance believes several trends have raised latent concerns about doing business in Canada.

First Nations has successfully mobilised political will against energy projects, both fraccing in places like New Brunswick and oil sands pipelines in British Columbia.

Such projects, once deemed inevitable, are now anything but, as popular opposition and rising costs eat into the value proposition.

Second, little progress has apparently been made on plans for large-scale mining in northern hinterlands. Even the ouster of the separatist-socialist Parti Quebecois in provincial elections, and the adoption of a mining reform more favourable to miners, apparently couldn’t rescue investor sentiment.

The third thing Rance listed was his observation that Harper’s push for a free trade deal with Europe has become tangled in the EU’s separate free trade negotiations with the US.

“What seemed like a done deal in early 2014 now is evidently still under consideration in places like Germany,” Rance said.

“On the flip side, Canada’s economy remains very resilient, and it is poised to benefit from the economic recovery in the US. Oil and gas extraction remains a big driver of economic growth in the prairies, and projections for agricultural goods like wheat and potash are fairly strong.”