Well, that was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? No sooner had the OPEC+/Russia and others deal been extended, signed and delivered as promised than that old sneaky spoiler of the party – unimpeded, explosive shale oil growth and negative market sentiment – raised its ugly head again and promptly knocked the feet out from under the market faster than you can say yippee ki-yay!

 

You will notice I left out the end of that sentence, but most people in North America know there is an M and an F involved. And of course it is a line from one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. That’s right, Christmas movie. Don’t argue with me.

 

On the subject of movies, I have 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. 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 such timely holiday classics as Hats Off to Christmas, Christmas in <<insert generic small-town name here>>, 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 – either a scrooge-like, non-Christmasy city-slicker is dumped into small-town America where they discover the true meaning of Christmas or some “commoner” American (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.

 

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 plot synopses for each as if they were set in the energy industry.

 

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, Rachel Notley desperately wants a “TransMountain Expansion” for Christmas and spends her time dodging a bully named Kenney. Ultimately, she receives the longed for gift from Santa Trudeau, except of course it comes with a catch and that’s a carbon tax that ends up almost shooting her eye out – careful! As the movie ends we’re still not sure what will happen, but Notley and Trudeau are eating Peking Duck together at a Chinese restaurant.

 

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, the Middle East and Saudi Arabia and 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 drive his stock price up so he can get paid a massive bonus. Clark overpays for land, borrows indiscriminately and squeezes all his suppliers and service providers to drop their costs as much as possible so he can show great numbers. Eventually however, the overworked completions crew based in Midland decides they are tired of working for 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.

 

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 the 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 short cycle 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 soft 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 pipeline foreman Johnny Canuck is doing integrity work and a cutout on a live mainline natural gas pipeline 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 cab of his truck – the usual. In the closing scene, Canuck has been chased to the end of a side-boom where the chief eco-warrior tries to convert him by yelling at him with a bullhorn. “Repent now you fossil fuel exploiting freak” yells the eco-dude but he slips into the bell hole while he’s doing it and only the fast reflexes of Canuck grabbing his wrist saves him from getting crushed by a length of pipe. “Hey” yells Canuck, “where’s your helmet, your safety tickets and your cover-alls?” before getting him a blanket 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.

 

After David Suzuki, an environmentalist, wishes that oil had never been discovered, 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 8 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 discovers that Donald Trump is the co-emperor of the world Vladimir Putin. 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, a smiling Suzuki is seen driving an excavator as a bell rings – another oil angel got its wings.

 

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

 

I know you all wanted Die Hard as the 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?

 

Last point – Diner is actually the best Christmas movie of all time, I just didn’t want to have to ruin the movie with the bad re-plotting.

 

Prices as at December 21, 2018, (December 14, 2018)

• The price of oil fell during the week on demand and supply concerns.
  • Storage posted a decrease
  • Production was flat
  • The rig count in the US was up
• Withdrawals from storage were higher than anticipated for natural gas. Price fell…

• WTI Crude: $45.38 ($51.02)
• Western Canada Select*: $29.43 ($33.49)
• AECO Spot *: $1.80 ($1.59)
• NYMEX Gas: $3.712 ($3.815)
• US/Canadian Dollar: $0.7371 ($0.7477)

*Due to overwhelming interest, we are now including prices for Canadian commodities, in case you weren’t angry enough.

Highlights

• As at December 14, 2018, US crude oil supplies were at 441.5 million barrels, a decrease of 0.5 million barrels from the previous week and 5.0 million barrels above last year.
  • The number of days oil supply in storage is 25.6 compared to 25.3 last year at this time.
  • Production was flat for the week at 11.600 million barrels per day. Production last year at the same time was 9.780 million barrels per day.
  • Imports rose from 7.393 million barrels to 7.423 million barrels per day compared to 7.834 million barrels per day last year.
  • Exports from the US rose from 2.274 million barrels per day to 2.375 million barrels per day last week compared to 1.858 million barrels per day a year ago
  • Canadian exports to the US were 3.087 million barrels a day, down from 3.480
  • Refinery inputs rose during the during the week at 17.408 million barrels per day
• As at December 14, 2018, the traditional end of injection season, US natural gas in storage was 2.773 billion cubic feet (Bcf), which is about 21% lower than the 5-year average and about 20% less than last year’s level, following an implied net withdrawal of 141 Bcf during the report week
  • Overall U.S. natural gas consumption was down 16%  during the report week as more normal weather returned
  • Production for the week was flat. Imports from Canada were down 3% from the week before. Exports to Mexico decreased 2%
  • Deliveries from LNG plants for the report week were 24.7 Bcf.
• As of December 21, 2018, the Canadian rig count was 130 (AB – 104; BC – 15; SK – 11; MB – 0; Other – 1. Rig count for the same period last year was 134.
• US Onshore Oil rig count at December 21, 2018 was at 883, up 10 from the week prior.
  • Peak rig count was October 10, 2014 at 1,609
• Natural gas rigs drilling in the United States was down 1 at 197.
  • 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 up 1 at 24
  • Offshore peak rig count at January 1, 2015 was 55
• US split of Oil vs Gas rigs is 80%/20%, in Canada the split is 65%/35%

Drillbits

• The Government of Canada announced loan programs for the energy sector of up to $1.6 billion, an action that was not well received by a province that simply wants a pipeline
• A 22km long caravan of trucks protested the lack of action by the Canadian government in support of the energy industry. See above
• ExxonMobil announced it was withdrawing its application for an LNG facility on the West Coast. While yet another project that is getting ditched in Canada, this one wasn’t really much of a surprise.
• Trump Watch: Christmas gift to government workers? A completely unnecessary government shutdown! Stock market in turmoil. Interest rates up. Mattis gone. Syria surrendered to Iran, Turkey and Russia. Afghanistan is next. If I were Israel and Saudi Arabia, I would be looking at a strategic alliance.