“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]
Column: Useful idiots? May and Blanchet may be handy tools, but they then forfeit any claim to the environmentalist designation
You know, this self-isolation thing isn’t all bad. How many of you can handle boring dinner parties or the like? For those of us that would rather spend an evening unclogging toilets, we devise coping mechanisms. I cowardly avoid them. Larry David, famously prickly star of Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld fame, simply stands up as soon as he’s finished eating, and leaves. A friend of mine has a different tactic. He accepts the invitations, joins the conversations, and as soon as his interest [Read more]
Column: Oil market mayhem hard to analyze, even without Russia/Saudi antics
“I’m not a pessimist, I’m an optometrist.” Ricky, lovable imbecile and small-time felon from "Trailer Park Boys" (bless you Netflix) If there is anything funny at all about the COVID-19 experience, other than some very clever memes making the rounds, it’s the way that market commentators, the ones that “give meaning” to the day’s market activity, have been reduced to puddles of gibberish in trying to explain what’s going on. They try hard, oh lord they do try, but the standard reference [Read more]
Column: Maybe COVID-19 will help break some moronic but persistent infinite loops
In the annals of didactic cinematography, where the antics of wise and/or screwball characters amuse while tricking us into learning some sort of life lesson, all the highbrow Shakespearean puffery and Hollywood writing/casting skills take a back seat to the resonating human-condition life-lesson provided by Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. For those of you unfortunate enough to have lived through the show (on tiny fuzzy TV screens that a three-year-old would lose it if forced to watch), Ralph [Read more]
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