The former chief executive officer of TransCanada Corp. (TRP.TO) and Talisman Energy Inc. is sounding the alarm on “unreasonable” regulation in the energy sector amid low natural gas prices.

“It’s really quite horrific,” Hal Kvisle said of the burden imposed by regulations, which he described as “excessive,” in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Thursday.

Kvisle, who served as TransCanada’s CEO from 2001 to 2010, is now chairman of Arc Resources Ltd. He was also a co-chair of Alberta’s Natural Gas Advisory Panel last year.

“What TransCanada is faced with today is expanding capacity from Grande Prairie in northwest Alberta to Empress on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, and having to go through ponderous National Energy Board procedures to get approval to effectively put one pipe in beside pipes that already exist.”

“This takes more than three years to get through that process – it’s unreasonable,” he added.

Kvisle’s comments come after his warning that the natural gas industry is facing a “full-blown crisis” in the wake of weak natural gas prices, a sentiment that was shared by Peyto Exploration & Development Corp. when the company announced Wednesday it is cutting its forecast and temporarily slashing its dividend.

“What is really bedeviling people like Peyto and other gas producers in Western Canada, [is] the ponderous slowness of getting any approval to expand capacity,” Kvisle said.

“That’s the real problem at the end of the day that we have to fix,” he added. “And I’m just afraid that federal regulatory processes are going in the wrong direction on that.”