Crude Observations

Well folks, I’m back. Did you miss me? I decided to take a couple of weeks off from blogging since I figured what could possibly happen in the time between my last Blog about – what was it? Naughty or nice lists? Christmas movies? I don’t remember – and now.   Well, I was apparently wrong. But really, who in the world could have predicted that chaos, pandemonium and assault on the norms of democracy that we saw on January 6th in Washington DC never mind the “Wide Right” Buffalo Bills qualifying for the NFL […]

Well here it is, Christmas Eve, the shopping is finally stopping and the family is sitting around being uber-lazy and getting ready for the big day.   I know I promised last Friday was the last blog for the year but I can’t help myself.   The tradition is a poem on Christmas Eve and gosh darn if I’m not going to honour that and regale you. In this oh so not normal of a year, where all our traditions appear to be getting heaved out of the flying sleigh, it’s nice to know that […]

Well this has been an eventful year, filled with ups and downs. Market gyrations, pandemics, elections, conflict, Bitcoin, Trump, energy market meltdowns and recoveries, negative prices, skyhigh valuations for tech, record low valuations for energy, transitions, Brexit, Wexit, Texit – you name it.   The funny thing about the end of the year is that there is always a rush of news leading into it and then it goes quiet. It just seems so volatile now and we don’t know where things are ultimately going to land, but with a vaccine and election certainty and […]

Well here we are folks, a mere two weeks/blogs removed from a socially distant Christmas. Three days away from the Electoral College in the United States formally casting their vote for President-elect Joe Biden (did you ever think you would learn so much about US politics?), one year into every Albertan’s favourite sitcom (the Alberta War Room) and a mere ten years away from Canada exceeding its Paris Accord emissions target of a 30% reduction against 2005 emissions. All accomplished through the use of an ever-increasing carbon tax and shameless bribery of the Canadian public […]

Look, I know it’s the holiday season and all of you are waiting breathlessly for me to do a blow by blow review of the latest Hallmark Christmas Movie lineup, but as I am reminded every so often I have a job to do. And that job is to share with you my wisdom and knowledge and ridiculously keen insight into the state of the energy market both here at home in the Province of Alberta as well as across Canada and around the world.   And since this is the last “non-holiday themed” blog […]

So here we are. American Thanksgiving finally come and gone. The Detroit Lions losing the traditional Thursday game and the Washington Football Team, led by the inspirational Alex Smith (if you don’t know, google it) sticking it to the hated Dallas Cowboys.   And here we are, caught up in the throes of lockdowns, resets (great or otherwise), circuit breakers, rollbacks, COVID resurgence, the Groundhog Day moments of watching Trump lose the election over and over again as his appeals get denied, the partisan sniping and mutually assured destruction that qualifies as political dialogue in […]

It seems like every week as I sit down to write this here blog, I go through my own version of the seven stages of grief. I start off shocked that I have no ideas, gradually get mad, panic a bit, get a little insight and then start writing and see where things take me. Sometimes it’s a dud and sometimes it works. Ironically we are also seeing the seven stages play out in real time through the manic twists and turns of the US post-election period and I can’t help but think that Donald […]

Is it just me or does it seem like there are a disproportionate amount of Friday the 13ths this year? Here we are at another one and I am hard pressed to say whether anyone’s luck has changed since that other one way back in March when we closed our laptops and went home. Certainly not the oil patch, although recent stock price moves have been appreciated.   Casting about for a subject to write about this week I realize that the recent US election has left me exhausted. And while the result may be […]

Dear world. It has now been 1327 days since the US presidential election on November 3rd. And we find ourselves strangely waiting and waiting and waiting for a resolution of some kind. And you know what they say – idle hands do the devil’s work or something like that.   In the case of the candidates, this means they are unable to move on.   Donald Trump, watching his re-election prospects fade with every mail-in ballot discovered in a storage room in Philadelphia or under a bridge in Atlanta or in a potted cactus on […]

What could go wrong!   It’s Blog time, time for a super scary Halloween edition filled with spooks, ghosts and surprises. Terrors both large and small, the usual litany of candy and trick or treating fun and, for those who want such things, a bold election prediction.   But first, Halloween. Way more fun than crazy lection predictions, although I am sure I can weave some random bouts of politics into this.   Remember trick or treating back in the day? Running around the neighbourhood like the hyperactive sugar-mainlining little twerps we all were, stomping […]

As we careen madly to the close of this most unusual election season, Canadians can be forgiven for reaching peak election exhaustion. I am talking of course about the two simultaneous elections in BC and Saskatchewan and a narrowly averted one nationally since, as we know, each of those two elections will set Canada on an unalterable course for the foreseeable future.   Eager to show my prognosticative bona fides to my illustrious audience, let me share with you what is going to happen in each of these places.   First off, Saskatchewan will reliably […]

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately and my brain has been spinning. First off, I got left off a “circle of smart friends” meme on Twitter so my feelings are currently a bit, shall we say, frayed. But I will get over it. Because I know I do a pretty good job pretending to be smart most days, sometimes even rising to the occasion and delivering a real dose of smartness right when it is least expected.   As just one example, I have been thinking a lot about Alberta. Our government. […]

Another week come and gone, and our deranged world got just a tiny bit stranger. So strange in fact that  am writing this blog in the past because it was due on a Friday and today is Saturday and if things hold, I won’t be sending it out until tomorrow, which is Sunday.   So what happened that I am early/late with the blog? Well I went for a bike ride with a friend yesterday, along what is called the Legacy Trail which connects Canmore to Banff and runs just a shade under 45 km […]

Well folks, here we are. Three quarters of the way through the year and we still don`t have a good picture of where things are going to end up although the picture is possibly getting clearer by the day.   And yes, I realize that publishing my Q3 report card the day after Donald Trump and, it seems, a large portion of his inner circle has tested positive for COVID19 seems to miss the mark on being topical. So let’s get that out of the way.   First off, let me state my actual sincere […]

Well folks, another week gone by, another political crisis or two under our belts. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s getting to the point where instead of being constantly exhausted by all the hyper-partisan rhetoric and aggrievement that I am becoming numb to it.   Speech from the throne that doesn’t specifically address the issues facing the oil and gas industry? I’m over it, expected nothing more. Prime Ministerial address in prime time that was nothing more than an infomercial for government policies? You thought it might be different with this […]

For us oil and gas types, there is a thing that happens around this time every year. You can almost set your old timey pocket watch by it, it is that predictable. No, I’m not talking about football (although let’s face it, I could be), nor am I talking about the annual exodus of Canada Geese to warmer climes or the annual weather debacle that is the Atlantic Hurricane season.   No, I’m talking about that September rush to get predictions in for next year, particularly on the energy side where it seems not a […]

Well that’s annoying. As you can tell, this week’s blog is late (again). Rest assured, this is not a new thing I plan on doing. It was partially a deliberate choice. I had decided some time ago not to publish on 9/11 for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it was my daughter’s birthday and we had a small, socially distanced and masked birthday party planned at the Cat Café (it’s a thing – you get coffee and pet cats). Anyway, that was to be my afternoon, so I delayed publishing until the 12th. […]

Ah Labour Day. That annual celebration of the righteousness of the downtrodden worker, the brave collectives and essential workers, putting it all on the line day after day in order to enrich the greedy capitalist fat cats who live for exploiting the masses.   Or at least that’s the way it started. Now Labour Day is just the last long weekend of the summer, the flashing beacon that your time sitting around on your duff at the lake has come to end and that it is time to go back to work and back to […]

Or, alternatively, a way to address our Paucity of Savings and Taxes.   On Thursday, Alberta’s provincial government gave its fiscal update and, folks, it’s grim and Pretty Scary Times.   The pandemic, combined with the downturn in the energy sector, has taken a chainsaw to Alberta’s already challenged financial situation. The deficit has exploded from a fairly pedestrian $8 billion (in Canadian terms) to close to $25 billion and counting. Debt is predicted to rise to close to $100 billion before the dust settles. It’s a Prodigiously Startling Total.   It’s ugly here, but […]

Apologies for the late blog everyone. I really have no excuse for my tardiness except that I have been a complete slacker lately. I suppose I could blame the Conservative Party and say I was waiting on the results of their leadership race, that isn’t actually entirely accurate. Well I guess it’s accurate enough for why the blog is out this morning rather than last night, but in all the reality, the CPC race wasn’t really a “stop the presses” type of event, more of a slowly developing car wreck.   So how has everyone’s […]

Alright folks here we are. It’s mid-August and the blog is late. Why you may ask? Well, simple really. I was on vacation. Taking a break. Spending a few precious moments with family not thinking about what mask I’m supposed to wear, what the restaurant protocol is, do I have to run the lettuce through a liquid hydroxychloriquine rinse before I eat it, can I send my kids to school without all the attendant insanity of potential infection, contact tracing, lockdowns, online learning and quarantines. Never mind obsessing about when can I open the office […]

So here I was this week hoping for something to come along and inspire me for blog writing. Some seminal event that I could latch onto and use as inspiration for a mid-August barn-burner. I gotta say though, this type of hope appears to be increasingly misplaced as we, as a world and an energy economy, seem to be permanently stuck on a hamster wheel of inanity and self-loathing.   Don’t believe me? Consider these news topics and opinion pieces from the prior week.   Trump reinstates aluminum tariffs on Canada.   Dakota Access Pipeline […]

Ah the dog days of summer. It is truly the best time of year. We are currently in what we in Calgary call “the one week where the weather doesn’t 100% suck” and where we try to get all the summer activity we can in before the various indignities our weather regularly foists on us return to make our lives more of a living hell than lockdown and social isolation. Don’t believe me? Why it was only last week that the daily pattern of “Severe Thunderstorm Warning” followed by terrifying hailstorm and sheet lightning finally […]

I was taking a look at the calendar this morning and I realized that we are a week away from the halfway point of summer. How did that happen? Where did the time go? I mean think of it, by the time you read next week’s blog, we will be into August. I think these are officially the dog days of summer and all we can hope for is that the weather, at least here in Calgary, will warm up and we can maybe go outside for more that an hour before yet another severe […]

You ever wonder about how the human mind works and how much truly trivial junk is stored on those overloaded servers? It’s fascinating to me because every week I have to come up with a theme for this blog and the path usually goes something like this:   Monday – well, I have 5 days before I have to deliver the blog, that’s lots of time but I can’t start now because there may be some late-breaking news like a pipeline ruling or a government patronage appointment that I need to deal with.   Tuesday […]

Another week, another Pandemic caused moment of weirdness in our already disrupted 2020 lives. If you have been a reader of this column for any length of time you will know that I am, if nothing else, a creature of habit. Certainly when it comes to the themes I apply to my regular columns.   Don’t believe me? You think it’s just some weirdo random walk through the tortured synapses of a brain filled with too much trivia? Well, you’d be partially right. Or mostly right, but there is pattern. And part of that pattern […]

Well folks, it’s official. We are halfway through 2020 and I have to say that this past six months has been the longest decade ever. But we’ll make it, I swear.   And with that halfway point reached, it is now time, yet again, to do a review of my 2020 Fearless Forecast, which I have now officially renamed the “Living on a Prayer” since any and all sanity and substance has been wrung out of the peerless prognostications due to COVID, price wars, economic shutdowns and all the attendant chaos that has been the […]

I know it seems early and it is a bit, but this coming Wednesday July 1 and we all know what that means.   That’s right, it’s time for my lazy annual celebration of all things canucklehead and there’s lots to celebrate each year at this time, like the NHL playoffs being just around the corner.   Ironically. I made that joke last year. This year it’s true. Hope springs eternal, the Leafs and the Habs still have a chance to win that elusive trophy we Canadians think we should own. How elusive? It was […]

Wow. Where does the time go folks? It seems like only yesterday that I was a wee buck, wet behind the ears, looking to make my way in a land of uncertainty and boundless opportunity. And now? I’m a beaten down wreck, a long term sufferer of the vagaries of the worst industry on the planet – the energy industry.   OK, not really. The energy industry has been just fine to me and my family. Which of course is why we rebranded recently. Actually, that’s not true either. We rebranded so we would stop […]

For the past several weeks, we have spent time on this blog discussing the state of the energy industry, making fun of various levels of government and postulating on what a post-pandemic world might look like. And don’t get me wrong, it has been a lot of fun because when I do the serious stuff it’s mostly dry and not as engaging as I think it should be.   But sadly, this blog can’t always be fun – sometimes it actually needs to be about “work” and “markets” since, as my partner reminds me, it’s […]

One of the benefits of doing this weekly coffee call that I have been pursuing these last couple of months is not only do I get to have far-ranging conversations about a host of topics with an engaging group of people, but I also get to use it as occasional inspiration for blog topics. And let’s face it, the last few weeks have been a bit of a challenge for me.   At any rate, this week I am taking inspiration from something we discussed a few weeks ago. The subject was the upcoming Conservative […]

So here we are entering Week 12 of lockdown, pandemic stay at home day 77, which now makes this self-isolation 2 days longer than that stint in jail in Tijuana a decade or so ago… Oh wait, that’s wrong. It wasn’t a decade ago and it wasn’t even me. But sometimes it feels like it, doesn’t it? Jail? Lockdown? Weird holiday’ish time?   Okay, for the record (and any subsequent internet searches) – I have never been in jail. Not here, not Mexico, not anywhere. And certainly not any period of time approaching 77 days, […]

It’s funny how things go in this new COVID world, one week you are bored out of your tree, the next week there is so much going on that it’s hard to focus on any one thing. This week of course has been no different, particularly in the energy sector as a number of announcements and developments that started in early May started to gain momentum and finally burst into prominence over the last seven to ten days.   Coupled with this are the recent movements in the price of oil, which we can safely […]

Welcome everyone to an abbreviated blog this week. Why is it abbreviated you might ask? Well because it’s the May Long Weekend here in Canadaland which can mean only one thing – that’s right, we are packing the family up for an extra long trip camping! Actually no, we aren’t doing that at all. We aren’t campers. No, instead we are going to spending the weekend at dance competitions since as everyone knows, my kids are dancers and this is dance competition frenzy time. Wait, no. All those competitions have been “postponed” this year.   […]

So there I was thinking that this week was going to be another of those weeks where I have to search long and hard for inspiration to break this seemingly endless bout of coronavirus writer’s block that seems to come and go depending on the weather and time of day.   Sometimes I am never sure what will happen when I sit in front of the keyboard or what strange brew will spill out of my brain. Some weeks I have perfect clarity that I know what needs to be discussed.   This week is […]

Ah, the first of May. First official day of Spring here in Calgary BTW, at least until it snows in a week or two (I kid you not). It is also officially day 2379 of our Covid19 induced self-isolation, which is rapidly just becoming the new normal – a kind of extended summer vacation where no one is around, mystery people ride bikes up and down our streets and my recent addiction to ripple potato chips conspires to rob me of any weight loss benefit of all this self-isolating eating.   Also worthy of note […]

Howdy all, welcome to the last blog of April 2020, a month that, to paraphrase one of my favourite presidents (if only because of that cupcake FDR and the New Deal economics class in university), will live in infamy.   From Chaucer (he dropped the iambic pentameter hammer on April showers) to folksy sayings (April showers bring May flowers (punch)) to the usual Calgary litany of freak snowstorms and patio weather (often in the same day!), April is quite often a bear of a month and this year it has been compounded by pandemic lockdowns […]

So we had our inaugural Crude Observations Coffee on Tuesday and I think it went pretty well. There was a spirited and friendly conversation back and forth about the new federal support program for the energy industry among other topical matters.   One of the more satisfying aspects of it was just being able to connect with people from a broad variety of backgrounds and industries to actually have a conversation about what they were doing, what they were feeling and how they were managing and coping with this pandemic mess.   I encourage anyone […]

One of the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on business is that many initiatives that companies had under way get shelved or put aside in the immediacy of the moment. What is a long term investment in the future of a business may seem a luxury when faced with the sudden need to establish work from home protocols, ensure your virtual presence is seamless and also help clients and prospects understand and navigate a volatile and frightening environment.   That said, time passes and soon enough people adapt and remember that the long […]

As the implications for the broader economy and Canadian businesses from the pandemic become clearer, we wanted to assure you that Stormont remains open and is available to help companies as they seek to adapt to an unprecedented environment.   If you or any business colleague are looking for advice on how to weather this storm, how and where to raise capital, need help restructuring a balance sheet or assistance with preparing financial projections, please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly.   Phone and video calls are easy to make and we […]

So here we sit, housebound mostly, wondering whatever can we do on a Good Friday to entertain ourselves. If you’re like me, you have probably gotten tired of Twitter and Facebook, or at least the Social Media Certified Epidemiologists who seem to dominate those platforms lately. Plus at this point the oil cuts aren’t finalized so I can’t opine on that, although I will at some point don’t you worry.   You’ve probably also gotten tired of and will never miss all the talking heads, the government press conferences, the criticisms of the government press […]

He’s my forecast…   Many apologies to the Hollies for that fairly cheap appropriation of one of their biggest commercial hits but, as this self-isolation social distancing thing continues I find myself going ever deeper down the rabbit hole of music that I used to regularly listen and waxing nostalgic about repressed memories.   Moreover (what a great word), it seems apt as a title for my first quarter report card on my forecast. It is not pretty. It is downright ugly. You can rest assured that there is no real passing grade in anything […]

Good day everyone, I hope you are all safe and sound and self-isolating to the best of your abilities, I understand it isn’t easy for everyone, jobs are different, some people are on the front lines and others don’t have the luxury of being a home office, cloud based desk jockey like me.   These are truly bizarre and uncertain times and as such, everything appears to be in flux, including where to take this blog on a week to week basis. Last week was about our response to COVID-19 and what we are doing […]

Or as I like to call it, Office Cat Week 1.   Another abbreviated blog this week, which of course is weird seeing as how I have so much time on my hands what with being housebound for the past week and how verbose I can be. But as luck would have it, my message this week is intentionally brief and to the point and is focused on what we are doing in the short term to manage through this COVID-19 crisis.   Like most companies, our business has felt immediate impacts from the Coronavirus […]

Abbreviated this week AND late, but please read to the end, and no hoarding!   Another week, another 7 days of mayhem and chaos across the globe as the insanity of Coronavirus Panic sweeps North America and picks the scab off of civil society – exposing the festering underbelly of human nature while all the while governments attempt to wrestle this crisis to at the very least a stalemate.   I’m not going to get on too much about what is happening in grocery stores as I am kind of all done with that. From […]

Alright folks, it’s March! Are we ready for 2020 to be over yet? I most certainly am. Are you desperately waiting to hear the sweet guitar intro to Here Comes the Sun on the radio – always my first indication that we are finally emerging from the depths of winter and the only song 100% guaranteed to put a smile on my face?   It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter folks, but I think we may just make it through. Days are longer, smiles are returning, all that stuff. As they say, we all […]

Hi everyone, I’m back! Did anyone miss me? Did anyone even know I was gone? Seriously, did anyone even notice? This is important to me because, well, I like to feel important. And I like to think that I play some small role in my readers’ lives whether it is through the injection of some levity into their lives or some pithy and relevant insight into the events that shape our lives or just an entertaining five to ten minute read in your favourite place to do such things.   So, where was I last […]

I originally thought this week’s blog would be a sweet and sentimental riff on Valentine’s Day (given that today is of course Valentine’s Day) and I may still include a poem at the end because that’s what I do, but that didn’t seem topical enough.   Then I thought, hey, what if I write something about the current fever swamp of protests against the Coastal Gas Link pipeline by, at last count, dozens of groups earnest and ill-informed protestors across the country and the chaos they are causing for commuter and industrial rail traffic across […]

Good afternoon fellow readers. It brings me great pleasure to announce that the month of January 2020 has now come to an official end. Feel free to stand up and applaud as the longest and worst month of the past decade has come to a merciful close. And in celebration of that august occasion, I am taking this moment to turn over a new leaf, to put on my relentlessly positive hat (yes, I have one) and engage in a blog that will be filled with nothing but good news. Okay, it won’t be nothing […]

Are we actually doing this again? This is now the third week in a row where cockamamie outside events have made it impossible for me to write cogently about the state of the energy industry either here or abroad. What with the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday (more on that later of course), the ongoing coronavirus madness, the impeachment protocols and now, of all things, Groundhog Day to contend with, I am at a loss as to when I will ever get the chance to write about energy issues ever again.   Although, with […]

First we come for the writer’s block, then we come for the writer. What a week it has been. You might say downright apocalyptic. Seriously folks, has there been a week in the recent past like this past one where it felt we were just hanging on by our fingernails?   Considering that just last week here in Canada we were shivering our way through a typical Canadian cold snap, thanking our lucky charms that we are the beneficiaries of a bounty of energy availability, the events that have transpired and accelerated over the past […]

Ugh, here we are. It happens every year. One week I expend an inordinate amount of energy and mental capital preparing my Fearless Forecast and the next I find myself sitting in my exceedingly messy office, staring hopelessly at my monitor (a nice oversized Hi-Def one by the way but not one of those fancy pants pretentious curved ones that some people get – ahem), shivering from how absurdly cold it is and completely unable to start, let alone finish, the blog.   This of course is truly bizarre to me because there is so […]

Are you ready for it? Because I sure am! Brace yourselves dear readers – it is that time of year where I lay myself bare to all of your collective scorn and ridicule and put out the one and only Fearless Forecast that you absolutely must read, right now, before the market opportunity escapes you! Read it! And sorry, it is long.   Anyhoo, step right up and let me tell you about the prognostications that will amplify and electrify your portfolios. The stock picks and the macro directions that will set you on the […]

OK folks, that’s a wrap. The year is over. Finally. And what a year it has been, particularly for the energy sector. And by that I mean it hasn’t been a particularly great year. In fact, I feel it has been a bit of a lousy year. A forgettable year. A dumpster fire of a disaster year. Even with prices staging a super-excited late year rally, the sector is still stuck in the weeds, trying to figure out its way.   Here in Alberta, it’s even worse than elsewhere. For the umpteenth year in a […]

Well here it is, Christmas Eve, the shopping is finally stopping and the family is sitting around being uber-lazy and getting ready for the big day. While I rarely veer off my scheduled Friday blog, it has become somewhat of a tradition to do one last post before Christmas and after subjecting everyone to movie lists, Advent calendars and all that jazz, it’s nice to do a quick best wishes for the holidays missive.   It is worthy of note that unlike last year, where we careened into the new year on a wave of […]

Well what an eventful week or so it has been. We had Andrew Scheer step down as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Boris Johnson winning an unprecedented and bizarre mandate to wreck the United Kingdom via Brexit and good old Donald Trump getting the bad news that he is only the third president in the long and illustrious history of the United States to be impeached (I’m not orange, I’m peach!). Topping it all off was the Alberta War Room getting caught red-handed in a case of amateur hour logo theft. Ouch!   […]

So anything interesting happen this week? Any leaders of political parties facing headwinds? Any movement in commodity prices of note? It’s weird, isn’t it how so much news rushes up to swamp us in the run-up to the Christmas holidays and the new year? It’s like people want to get a whole mess of news out of the way so they can start the new year with a fresh slate. Who knows, maybe they are trying to clear the board in time before Christmas so that the big guy can move them from one list […]

Well folks, here we are entering the home stretch of the year, a time where many people wind down their work activity to accommodate as much holiday celebration as possible. At least that’s what I do because let’s face it, there are no new deals going into the market in December and transactions that close on December 31 are typically mostly wrapped up by mid month. That’s just how it rolls in the M&A world.   On the other hand, the end of the year is also an opportune time to cram in a bunch […]

Well, as our friends down South finally get around to celebrating Thanksgiving, I think it is safe to say that we have finally hit the holiday season. I don’t know what gave it away – the endless deluge of Christmas ditties while standing uncommunicative in the grocery store check out line, the Valentine’s display at Costco, the endless snowfalls we’ve endured, the annual Hallmark channel assault of Christmas movies or the lights and the trees that have sprung up on pretty much every house in the neighbourhood (except mine). Any one of those factors could […]

Well I hope everyone is relieved. We appear to have made it through an entire week without any major scandal or government edict causing chaos locally, regionally, nationally or globally. OK, so that’s not even remotely true, but it does feel like this week was less eventful than the week before, at least here in Canada. OK, not in Canada, maybe in Alberta. Well except for all the stuff that went on here too. Fine, I give up. It’s been another week of random chaos, government bills run amok, new cabinets (more on that next […]