As I head into week 5 of the stay at home mandate, it gives me far too much time to think about the current state of affairs and where we may be headed. With record-breaking unemployment levels reported across the country and around the world, followed by government assistance programs heaped out from above at record levels, there continues to be the chorus of “it will be fine; we just need to wait this out.” And we keep waiting. The problem I have with this assessment is that there is the [Read more]
Column: Despite the current malaise in Alberta, I’m optimistic for the future
For those who are old enough to remember there is the famous adage in Alberta, “Please God let there be another Oil Boom. I promise not to piss it all away next time”. That seems to be a common refrain these days. The pain has been real and has manifested itself through increasing unemployment rates, rising levels of personal and corporate insolvency, growing statistics of escalating suicide rates, domestic abuse and failed marriages. But the stark and harsh reality is that there is no mystical [Read more]
Column: An open letter to Chancellor Gordon and President Ono
Dear Chancellor Gordon and President Ono, I am writing to you today regarding your decision to divest from all investments in fossil fuel related companies within the endowment fund at The University of British Columbia. Though I take exception to this decision as you are effectively offshoring carbon-based fuel production to countries with lower environmental, ethical and regulatory standards than places such as Canada, I wish to discuss how you recently arrived at this decision. On the [Read more]
Open Letter to the Government of Canada – Part 2
Dear Prime Minister, Senators, Honourable MPs and Mr. Vandal, A few weeks past I wrote an Open Letter in order to highlight my concerns regarding my not being allowed to enter the Senate of Canada with my “I ♥ Canada Oil + Gas” shirt as it may offend some people. Shortly after publishing this, I was inundated with phone calls from Senators, media and people from the general public that were concerned about how this could happen in Canada. After Senator Tkachuk raised his concerns in a [Read more]
Open Letter – How to get barred from visiting the Senate
Dear Prime Minister, Senators and Honourable MPs, I am writing to you today regarding a recent experience that I had in our nation’s capital. My wife and I travelled out east to drop our youngest child off at university for his first year of engineering. Seeing as this was a fairly long trip, we decided that we would extend our trip by a few days so as to take in the sights and sounds of Ottawa. Over the following few days we made plans to go on a bike tour of the city, visit the science [Read more]
Lacey: Where is the Equality in Equalization?
Yesterday I read the piece by Trevor Tombe in the Globe and Mail titled “Why equalization is not unfair to Alberta”. In the article Mr. Tombe goes into detail about the various transfer mechanisms that have been established by the Federal Government, and he knows far more than I would hope to on this particular topic. I will leave the debate regarding the mechanics of the system to people who are more apt and equipped to do so, and to whether the financial structures are fair or not. Below I [Read more]
Lacey: Is Anybody Listening? I Don’t Want Cake, I Want a Pipeline
Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a rally at Calgary City Hall in support of pipeline development and the energy sector. To state the obvious, 2018 has been a challenging year. After plumbing the depths of unsustainably low oil prices and then seeing a recovery, years of inaction in terms of pipeline approvals and development resulted in a wave of new production overwhelming the existing export capacity. As a result, differentials ballooned to unprecedented levels, cash flow [Read more]
Lacey: Ignorance is bliss – curtailment and other market misconceptions
Previously I wrote about the need for the Government of Alberta to enact legislation to curtail the oversupply of crude oil in the province and try to restore more 'normal' differentials. Last Sunday, Premier Rachel Notley took the bold step of telling producers they need to reduce production by 325 MBpd or roughly 8.7% of total production starting in January 2019. When layered together with an exemption for producers who were below 10 MBpd, this translated to approximately 25 producers in [Read more]
Lacey: Crisis mode – It’s time to get ‘er done
Yesterday was an interesting day in that both the NDP and the UCP came out with speaking points as it relates to the current differential crisis in Alberta. Premier Notley announced that Alberta will buy rail cars to move oil, albeit the effect won’t be until a year from now, and Jason Kenney came out and saying that the government needs to implement a temporary, mandatory production curtailment in response to the current differential environment. There has been a mixed response to the various [Read more]
Lacey: Stop being indifferent about differentials
There has been a lot of discussion of late in Alberta regarding the differentials and the impact on the energy industry. What surprised me was that most of the people whom I spoke with had a fundamental lack of knowledge of what exactly made up that differential. As such, it got me to sit down and try to put together a “Differentials 101” to help explain where we are today. The first thing that has to be answered is the question “what is a differential?” Simply stated, the differential is the [Read more]