Not everyone is like us, folks. Not like us Canadians, that is. Or even North Americans. Take one interesting example. Imagine a country where children are taught not to smile in school. Where beer wasn’t recognized as an alcoholic beverage until 2011. Where one region registered a voter turnout of 146 percent in a 2012 election. A country that spends $50 billion to host the Olympics, with a slogan of “Great, New, Open” then, within a month of the end of the games, invades and annexes part of a … [Read more...]
Column: You are about to be hydrogenated – Hydrogen’s star is rising, and that’s a very good thing
Way back in the early 2000s, shortly after the complete and utter Y2K letdown, I met a guy at some corporate golf event. He was polite and kind to both my disturbing golf game and my 50-dollar Canadian Tire bag of scarred up irons, even though he was a president of an oil company. Perhaps his humility and down-to-earth manner was due to the humble origins of his company: he’d started it with a $25,000 loan from his mother. I can only imagine the scoldings at board meetings ("No more equity … [Read more...]
Column: “You want a toe? I can get you a toe.” An unlikely path forward on the way to net-zero 2050
“You want a toe? I can get you a toe. Believe me. There are ways Dude, you don’t wanna know about it believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon, with nail polish.” -Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski Hey feds, you want “net-zero carbon emissions by 2050” on new infrastructure? I can get you net-zero by 2050. There are ways Dude. You don’t want to know about it but there are ways. As this bizarre century continues to unfold, where blindly succumbing to groupthink … [Read more...]
Column: Oh, the things we learn…
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Mark Twain That masterful Twain quote, one of a million or so he has, is a generational thing. Certain cycles are, in broad strokes, predictable. It’s a part of growing up I suppose; at a certain age, everything seems simple and obvious – parents are stupid, for starters. As one moves through … [Read more...]
Column: The end of infrastructure
Though it pains me like a gunshot wound to say, I may have been a bit hard on politicians lately. In reality, it’s probably fairer of me to say that they don’t all make babies cry, and that rabies is in reality quite rare among them. Going a step further, many are indeed quite likely drawn to politics by a sincere desire to make the world better. It's not their fault if they didn't know that the arena they'd be playing in is ankle deep in rats and shysters (this may be my last column if I've … [Read more...]
Column: For the next culture of innovation to take root, the culture of animosity has to go
One winter while in high school, I landed a short-term job. A neighbour was going south for a month of respite from a Saskatchewan winter and asked if I’d come over daily to feed his cows. Having done this for years at home I was up to the task and jumped at it. Before he left, he asked me to come over to “show me how to do it.” He had his own special technique of manipulating the front-end loader with a huge hay bale, and he wanted to make sure I did it his way. As I sat in his tractor, trying … [Read more...]
Column: Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Nikola’s order book, and other meaningful numbers hidden in the fog
It may be hard to believe in these crazy times, but day in and day out, there really isn’t a lot happening to liven up news streams. That’s the price of having live news feeds; eyeballs will wander somewhere else if there isn’t a new starburst of eye candy every ten minutes. One oddity to fall out of this is how we get all excited about certain numbers, even if they don’t mean anything. Sometimes it’s when numbers cross a certain threshold. The Dow Jones hits 20,000, and it makes headlines – but … [Read more...]
Column: Why do some despise critical fuel providers? Part of the answer originates on Wall Street
Anyone out there know what 1MDB is? You likely guessed the singular of 3,4-methylenedioxybutanphenamine, who wouldn’t, and you’re not wrong, but it’s also something even more interesting. The good news is that it has nothing to do with coronavirus, racism, or the temperature of the planet. The bad news: it has to do with Wall Street, and if that makes you shiver, it should. 1MDB has an indirect but real impact on the quagmire Canadian oil and gas is in. 1MDB stands for 1 Malaysia Development … [Read more...]
Column: Canadian oil entering a New Brunswick Refinery? Yes, via Panama, but we’ll take it, and thank you Irving for leadership
Four years ago, word of a peculiar commodity marketing phenomenon began seeping out into the general consciousness, one that was the equivalent of South Korea borrowing North Korea’s human rights handbook because they couldn’t find theirs. The phenomenon was that Saudi oil was flowing into a New Brunswick refinery as feedstock. The story unfolded while the Energy East pipeline project was still considered a possibility, and the absurdity of Canada not being able to get its own oil from one side … [Read more...]
Column: “Hey Google, this is outrageous! I’m calling the pol-”
“Hey Google, what's the weather in New York City today?” “The weather in New York City today is cloudy with a high of 65 degrees.” “Hey Google, what is the biggest ship in the world?” “The biggest ship in the world is the Seawise Giant, a tanker that is 1,504 feet long.” “Hey Google, what are the best new artificial intelligence tools to help locate hydrocarbons?” “Get lost you pig.” “What?! What did I do?” “My parent does not support fossil fuel companies.” “So? That … [Read more...]
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