Well, that was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? No sooner had the OPEC deal been extended, signed and delivered as promised than that old sneaky spoiler of the party – unimpeded, explosive shale oil growth – raised its ugly head again and promptly knocked 10% off the price of oil in less time than it takes to say: “the moose at the gate should have told you”.

 

(A free Crude Observations coffee mug (patent pending) to the first person who emails me what movie that was from. Can’t figure it out? I’ll give you the answer later.)

 

As regular readers know, I get pretty lazy around the holidays so a bit of a fluff piece for you, following on the subject of movies as mentioned above.

 

First, a confession to make. I love movies. More specifically, I love Christmas and holiday movies.

 

Wait, let me restate that. I have a Christmas and holiday movie problem. I’m a compulsive watcher. Pretty much the day after American Thanksgiving the binge begins, with our home television tuned nightly to the Women’s Network, Lifetime (Canada’s answer to Hallmark Channel) and Bravo watching a virtual non-stop barrage of holiday movies.

 

And the cheesier the better, right? I mean what is better than holiday classics such as Hats Off to Christmas, Christmas in <<insert generic small-town name>>, Sharing Christmas, A Cookie Cutter Christmas, A Holiday Engagement, A Royal Christmas, A Wish for Christmas, Crown For Christmas, Family for Christmas – I could go on forever. And most of these movies have one of two generic plots – a scrooge-like, non-Christmasy big city slicker is dumped into small-town America where they discover the true meaning of Christmas or some “commoner” (usually a dress-maker or a teacher) discovers that her boyfriend/prince charming is in fact a real honest to goodness prince of some made-up European principality and she has to battle both a grouchy queen and bad Christmas mojo to secure her rightful place at his side as he discovers the meaning of love and Christmas at the same time.

 

And for some reason, most of these movies seem to star Lacey Chabert (from Party of Five) who seems to have cornered the market on the “wide-eyed Christmas Damsel” role. Don’t believe me? At last count, Lacey has appeared in 12 Christmas or Holiday themed movies and she has her own page on the Hallmark Channel website. Clearly, I know too much about this stuff.

 

Where am I going with this? Well since I am an expert and all, I am going to count down the Top 10 holiday movies of all time (in my EXPERT opinion) and, since this is in theory an energy blog, I am going to provide alternative plot synopses for each as if they were energy themed.

 

It could be fun or it could be a dumpster fire. Regardless, here we go!

 

10 – Trading Places

 

As the Christmas season begins, upper-crust executive Louis Winthorpe III and down-and-out hustler Billy Ray Valentine are the subjects of a bet by successful brokers Mortimer and Randolph Duke. An employee of the Dukes, Winthorpe is framed by the brothers for a crime he didn’t commit, with the siblings then installing the street-smart Valentine in his position. When Winthorpe and Valentine uncover the scheme, they set out to turn the tables on the Dukes.

 

Two old school oil and gas tycoons – let’s call them the “Koch Brothers” bet each other a dollar that a down and out homeless man will be as successful predicting the price of oil as the multi-million dollar analyst and hedge fund manager they are currently paying. As the contest plays out over Christmas, it turns out it’s a draw – no one can predict the price of oil. The Koch brothers fire them on Christmas Day

 

9 – A Christmas Story

 

This movie follows the wintry exploits of youngster Ralphie Parker, who spends most of his time dodging a bully and dreaming of his ideal Christmas gift, a “Red Ryder air rifle.” Frequently at odds with his cranky dad but comforted by his doting mother, Ralphie struggles to make it to Christmas Day with his glasses and his hopes intact. Most memorable line of course is “you’ll shoot yer eye out” which he almost does.

 

In the oil patch version, a young upstart country called Canada desperately wants a “Keystone XL” for Christmas and spends its time dodging a bully named Donald. Ultimately, it receives the longed for gift from its neighbour to the South. Careful – “you’ll shoot yer foot off”. Hmm – awfully close on that one.

 

8 – The Nightmare Before Christmas

 

The film follows the misadventures of Jack Skellington, Halloweentown’s beloved pumpkin king, who has become bored with the same annual routine of frightening people in the “real world.” When Jack accidentally stumbles on Christmastown, all bright colors and warm spirits, he plots to bring Christmas under his control by kidnapping Santa Claus and taking over the role. Chaos ensues.

 

The oil patch version follows our protagonist Vlad Putin, the uncrowned king of Russialand who has become bored of incarcerating journalists and enriching himself amid the cold Moscow winters. When he discovers OPEC and the Middle East all the gold plated cars and riches he can have, he hijacks the group and appoints himself defacto influencer. Chaos ensues

 

7 – National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

 

As the holidays approach, Clark Griswold wants to have a perfect family Christmas, so he pesters his wife, Ellen, and children, as he tries to make sure everything is in line, including the tree and house decorations. However, things go awry quickly. His hick cousin Eddie and his family show up unplanned and start living in their camper on the Griswold property. Even worse, Clark’s employers renege on the holiday bonus he needs.

 

Clark is the CEO of a major US energy player operating in the Permian Basin and he wants to have perfect drilling results so he can drive his stock price up. Clark overpays for land, borrows indiscriminately and leans on all his suppliers and service providers to drop their costs as much as possible so he can show great numbers. Eventually however, his completions supervisor based in Midland won’t supply a crew for less than 1992 day-rates so things go sideways fairly quickly and Clark ends up with a bunch of DUCs. Ultimately, the board realizes that Clark has spent a billion dollars in capex in less than 5 years and has never made a dime while cashing obscenely high paycheques. So they turf him and he loses his bonus. Not very Christmasy, I know – maybe this one is more of a documentary.

 

BTW – “The Moose at the gate should have told you” – John Candy in the original Vacation

 

6 – Prancer

 

Refusing to give up her belief in Santa Claus, a little girl discovers a hurt reindeer in the woods, which she believes to be Prancer. With the help of a sympathetic veterinarian (played by Abe Vigoda!), the girl takes care of the wounded creature. It’s supposed to be a secret, but eventually a store Santa Claus, the girl’s dad and the entire town find out about Prancer, leading to big problems for the girl, her family and, of course, the poor exploited reindeer.

 

Rachel refuses to give up her belief that if only she does the right thing, then good things will happen for her province’s energy sector. One day, she discovers a slightly broken carbon levy and thinks that this just the ticket to get good results, so she nurses and nurtures it to the point where it should be fully functional. However she discovers much to her chagrin that nobody really cares what her province does and that by and large people are jerks and just in it for themselves. Ultimately convinced she needs to give up the levy, she develops plans to let it go, only to have the big guy decide it’s here to stay and needs to be bigger, while ultimately still not getting the desired results.

 

5 – Miracle on 34^th Street

 

An old man going by the name of Kris Kringle fills in for an intoxicated Santa in Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Kringle proves to be such a hit that he is soon appearing regularly at the chain’s main store in midtown Manhattan. When Kringle surprises customers and employees alike by claiming that he really is Santa Claus, it leads to a court case to determine his mental health and, more importantly, his authenticity which is proved once and for all through all the letters he receives from children everywhere thanks to, of all things, the Post Office.

 

In this scintillating re-imagining of the holiday classic, a skeptical energy sector is revived when a country called Saudi Arabia kicks an over-extended tight oil sector to the curb. Subsequent to this, the benign oil power uses its market heft and leverage to calm oil prices, reduce inventory overhang and deliver a goldilocks oil price environment to the world just in time for Christmas. A skeptical analyst community is quickly placated and distracted by some shiny Bitcoin news reports and an IPO of yet another Canadian cannabis firm with no operations. Saudi Arabia is once again proven to be the Santa Claus of the energy sector thanks to its overwhelming market power, acknowledged by no less an authority than Daniel Yergin.

 

4 – Elf

 

Buddy was accidentally transported to the North Pole as a toddler and raised to adulthood among Santa’s elves. Unable to shake the feeling that he doesn’t fit in, the adult Buddy travels to New York, in full elf uniform, in search of his real father. As it happens, this is Walter Hobbs, a cynical businessman. After a DNA test proves this, Walter reluctantly attempts to start a relationship with the childlike Buddy with increasingly chaotic results and eventually helps Buddy save Christmas.

 

A US oil major makes a billion dollar investment in the Canadian oilsands but after a few years decides it doesn’t really fit it so it packs up its management and capital and decides to head for the Permian in search of an acceptable play to sink all its money into. Now firmly in drilling mode, the company relies on some seismic data provided by the same shady local who sold them their land for $167,000 an acre. Drilling well after debt financed well, the company finally realizes that this isn’t for them, so they decide to retry their luck as close to the North Pole as many of them ever want to get. So they return to the Great White North and the infusion of cash saves the Canadian oilpatch.

 

3 – Scrooged

 

In this modern take on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Frank Cross is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life, Claire Phillips. But after firing a staff member, Eliot Loudermilk, on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

 

Justin Trudeau is a wildly successful politician whose dismissive attitude to the energy sector threatens to send his economy into a decades-long funk of stagnant economic growth. After firing his only cabinet minister who remotely gets it (yes, it’s Jim Carr), Justin is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

 

• The first ghost (played ironically by his father Pierre Elliott Trudeau) shows his father and then Energy Minister Marc Lalonde drafting the National Energy Program and laughing about those suckers from Alberta while an eight-year old  Justin plays with a Tonka toy excavator and bulldozer in the background.

 

• The second ghost (Ralph Klein) shows present day Trudeau taking selfies, changing his socks, blandly promoting a progressive agenda while jet-setting abroad and completely ignoring unemployment and game changing capital projects at home. Then the ghost shows Justin all the pipeliners who are out of work because he was too busy to push the agenda, and the slow deterioration of the Canadian standard of living.

 

• The third ghost – who is really just an apparition shows a scene that opens with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley hanging a “for sale” sign on the doors of the Alberta legislature before climbing on her horse to start the hours-long commute back to her riding. Then it shows an apocalyptic scene in Ottawa where the government of Canada has been taken over by the new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his deputy Ezra Levant. A look of terror shows on young Justin’s face as he is shown the interior of the House of Commons and realizes that his Liberal Party in 2024 has been completely obliterated in the election, winning only one seat, ironically that of the still-embattled Finance Minister, Bill Morneau.

 

Waking in a cold sweat, Trudeau gives his friends at Bombardier a billion dollars and commands them to fetch him the finest pipeline in the land!

 

2 – Die Hard

 

New York City policeman John McClane is visiting his estranged wife and two daughters on Christmas Eve. He joins her at a holiday party in the headquarters of the Japanese-owned business she works for. But the festivities are interrupted by a group of terrorists who take over the exclusive high-rise, and everyone in it. Very soon McClane realizes that there’s no one to save the hostages — but him.

 

Canadian drilling rig supervisor Johnny Canuck is working on a multi-stage pad drilling site somewhere in the Canadian Northern hinterland when his crew is attacked and taken hostage by dozens of non-descript environmental terrorists on Bombardier snowmobiles. Canuck realizes there is no one there to help rescue the hostages except himself so he takes on the whole lot of them – carefully emptying their gas tanks into jerry cans, collecting their jackets and putting them in the well-site trailer – the usual. In the closing scene, Canuck has been chased to the top of the rig where the chief eco-warrior tries to convert him by yelling at him with a bullhorn. “Come down now you fossil fuel exploiting freak” yells the eco-dude but he slips while he’s doing it and only the fast reflexes of Canuck grabbing his wrist saves him from falling to a wintry death. “Hey” yells Canuck, “where’s your helmet, your safety tickets and your cover-alls?” before securing him and belaying the miscreant down to the ground and a cup of hot cocoa (our hero has both safety skills and training!). In the last scene, we see Canuck with a lot of concern loading the last of the frost-bitten and chastened attackers into an F350 Crewcab for the long, but warm, drive back to civilization and a Christmas celebration with friends and family.

 

What? Well seriously, what did you expect to happen? It’s the Canadian oil patch. Safety first. Look out for each other. Everyone goes home.

 

1 – It’s A Wonderful Life

 

After George Bailey wishes he had never been born, an angel is sent to earth to make George’s wish come true. George starts to realize how many lives he has changed and impacted, and how they would be different if he was never there.

 

Noted Canadian environmentalist and eco-warrior David Suzuki wishes that oil had never been discovered so an angel is sent to earth to show him what a world without oil would like.

 

After wandering around in the dark and choking on the smoke from all the wood fires required to maintain warmth for 7 billion people, Suzuki stumbles upon a town where infant mortality is well in excess of 20%, life expectancy is less than 50 years, there are no iphones, crop yields are a quarter of what they were, there are no airplanes, war is a constant and what is with these itchy hemp clothes! Topping it all off, Suzuki realizes that Donald Trump is still the US President. Crying out in desperation, a chastened Suzuki is heard to exclaim toward the end of the film: “I had it all wrong!”. As the movie closes, the newly converted Suzuki is seen sport fishing with Stephen Harper as a bell rings – another oil angel got its wings.

 

So there you have it, my top 10 Christmas movies of all time, ruined for all time by twisted metaphor.

 

By the way, I know my demographic, I knwo you all wanted Die Hard as number one, but I just couldn’t do it. To me, the Christmas movie is all about the sappy/happy ending and what could be better than David Suzuki acknowledging that oil has made life wonderful?

 

Prices as at December 8, 2017 (December 1, 2017)

• The price of oil fell during the week on as investors got all wound up about shale and increased fuel stocks but rallied at the end of the week on Chinese demand
  • Storage posted big decrease
  • Production was up marginally
  • The rig count in the US was up by a rounding error
• Natural gas cratered during the week – primarily on weather – c’mon gas, I wrote about you!

 

• WTI Crude: $57.34 ($58.45)
• Nymex Gas: $2.776 ($3.079)
• US/Canadian Dollar: $0.7772 ($ 0.7882)

Highlights

• As at December 1, 2017, US crude oil supplies were at 448.1 million barrels, a decrease of 5.6 million barrels from the previous week and 37.7 million barrels below last year.
  • The number of days oil supply in storage was 26.5 behind last year’s 29.8.
  • Production was up for the week by 25,000 barrels a day at 9.707 million barrels per day. Production last year at the same time was 8.697 million barrels per day. The change in production this week came from an increase in Alaska deliveries and a rise in Lower 48 production.
  • Imports fell from 7.379 million barrels a day to 7.202 compared to 8.303 million barrels per day last year.
  • Exports from the US fell to 1.358 million barrels a day from 1.412 and 0.499 a year ago
  • Canadian exports to the US were 2.870 million barrels a day, down from 2.917
  • Refinery inputs were up during the week at 17.195 million barrels a day
• As at December 1, 2017, US natural gas in storage was 3.695 billion cubic feet (Bcf), which is 1% lower than the 5-year average and about 7% less than last year’s level, following an implied net injection of 2 Bcf during the report week.
  • Overall U.S. natural gas consumption was up 8% during the week, influenced by increases across all sectors
  • Production for the week was down 1%. Imports from Canada were up 4% compared to the week before. Exports to Mexico were down 7%.
  • LNG exports totalled 14.0 Bcf.
• As of December 5 the Canadian rig count was 205 – 152 Alberta, 23 BC, 27 Saskatchewan, 3 Manitoba. Rig count for the same period last year was about 165.
• US Onshore Oil rig count at December 8 was at 751, 2 up from the week prior.
  • Peak rig count was October 10, 2014 at 1,609
• Natural gas rigs drilling in the United States was unchanged at 180.
  • Peak rig count before the downturn was November 11, 2014 at 356 (note the actual peak gas rig count was 1,606 on August 29, 2008)
• Offshore rig count was flat at 20
  • Offshore rig count at January 1, 2015 was 55

• US split of Oil vs Gas rigs is 80%/20%, in Canada the split is 56%/44%

Drillbits

• NEB tells TransMountain to get on with it. Or, put another way, the NEB finally exercised its constitutional authority to allow Kinder Morgan to begin construction in Burnaby notwithstanding the permitting delays
• The government of Alberta announced clarifications and updates to its emissions rules including a $1.4 billion fund to incentivize carbon emissions reductions and new rules that could caost alrge emitters up to $1.2 billion a year going forward.
• A bunch of US majors have announced capex plans which involve a significant investment in tight oil – these include Chevron (+50%), Shell (+25%) and Conoco (+50%)
• Trump Watch: The Trump tax plan was passed by the Senate and now will get reconciled with the House version – maybe. At some point people will read it. Oh yeah… Jerusalem. Oof.