Sometimes a phenomenon comes along that captures the public’s attention in near totality, and we find ourselves losing our minds and joining the parade. The dot com boom was one example, a time when random new websites became worth billions despite the presence of any revenue. The US housing boom was another example. When people with no income, no jobs, and no assets suddenly started buying homes, a few fringe weirdos thought that that wasn’t right, but the mainstream line of thought was so [Read more]
Mr. Prime Minister, thanks for the visit, and hearing so well. Now it’s time to lead
Well, the bully’s back. Canada is getting its lunch money taken again, but this time it’s even worse. The bully shows up at our house on weekends too and takes $50 million per day, give or take $10 or $20 million. This is the same bully that told Canada it had a weak leader. There was a lot of indignation over that; Canadians aren’t all that keen on being seen as weak. On the other hand, Canadians now see themselves in a position where the problem can possibly be rectified. It was [Read more]
Why do we need proper energy advocacy? Because look at the damage when the Globe and Mail takes the wheel
No one out there needs reminding of how difficult it is to produce petroleum in Canada these days. The regulatory quagmire and relentless attacks from well-organized opponents are the most visible obstacles. Other impediments are equally frustrating, like, for example, the media’s refusal to comment on just how valuable natural gas is to BC at this very moment, and how oddly backwards it is for many to be condemning fossil fuels at the very moment they are in grave danger of not having [Read more]
Climate change dialogue has gone North Korean, which needs to stop, and even climate advocates are now agreeing
North Korea may seem a funny place to stop on the climate change road, but it’s not. The country is currently run by a vivacious chubby tyrant named Kim Jong-un, who succeeded his father, another tyrant named Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il was, according to official records, a remarkable man. His first round of golf was a dazzling 38 under par, including 11 holes in one, and immediately after that round he retired from golf forever. There’s more. His other talents make that look like amateur [Read more]
Canada’s woeful energy scene: with leadership like this, who needs enemies?
I was recently forwarded a link by a kind reader to a story about how “cleaning up Alberta’s oil patch could cost $260 billion.” Like many who do not have $260 billion, the article caught my eye. The startling number, as many of you now know, comes from a presentation made by an Alberta Energy Regulator executive last February to a “private audience.” It appears to have been some sort of rogue presentation, because the number exceeds the AER’s estimate by $200 billion. That is, [Read more]
Making Canada Great Again: Ignore smear campaigns, higher per capita emissions are the noble price we pay as the world’s natural resource pantry
Please send this message on to everyone in the world: Not one more word of apology. No more flustered grovelling because our per capita emissions are higher than average; they are that way for a reason. No more bowing to demands that Canada enforce outsized emissions cuts, when the reason for the emissions in the first place is that we hand other countries their building materials - we do the dirty work for them. As we wobble on our axis as an exporting nation, cross-threaded on everything [Read more]
Not too late for Thanksgiving: two BC incidents highlight the quality and value of the petroleum infrastructure that keeps us alive and unfrozen
Thanksgiving is a multipurpose holiday. It is a chance to see how much food can be inhaled in a single sitting, and to see how much of it can be turned to fat by watching football for the rest of the day. At some point though, it’s always nice to take a walk in the fall air, see the fall scenery (or wade through knee-deep snow if in Calgary), and mull over the things we should be grateful for. We all take a lot for granted, but this year BC provided a few crystal-clear examples of some [Read more]
You’ve blown it IPCC: Social engineering is not science, and no one believes you
I had a weird reference sheet that I carried around forever, one that represented a chink in the armour of academia. It was a photocopy of a page from a manufacturing cost accounting textbook I kept from university days. The page contained a cost-volume-profit problem about a washing machine manufacturer. If the manufacturer used a cheaper component, profit margin would increase by a certain percent, but sales would go down because the machines were less reliable. It was a simple profit vs. [Read more]
Call it what you want, but the National Energy Program is back
Not everyone is a market hawk. Not everyone enjoys watching the prices of everything from orange juice to pork bellies to crude oil bounce around like tennis balls in a dryer. Not everyone gets swept up in the nuances of hourly price changes, and that is a good thing – such short-term small fluctuations are often trader-driven and borderline irrelevant. On the other hand, some market data is pretty shocking and worth taking a peek at. For those that don’t pay much attention to markets, I [Read more]
BC’s LNG, a major natural gas pipeline and more crude by rail – Canada’s products finally get moving to a world that needs them
A few weeks ago, one of my columns spoke of the pall or lethargy that seems to have been cast over Canada. Whether through over-regulation, over-consultation or over-inhaling, Canada seems unable to rise to the challenges of keeping the nation moving forward. Many wrote to say how much the message resonated (thanks), and a few semi-coherent emails came in that missed the message but defended cannabis (and that resonance, between the garbled messaging and the defense of weed, seemed touchingly [Read more]
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