Crude Observations

This is the 9th consecutive week of me planning to do a blog every second week and the ninth consecutive week of “news” preventing me from doing that exact same thing. Just when I think I’ve escaped, they keep dragging me back in! I should be called the blogfather. And Al Pacino can play me in the movie. Come to think of it, Al would be a good choice – we bear a resemblance, even if my true doppelganger is Jon Hamm.   Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about Danielle Smith. Really? Do we […]

Sometimes I write letters.   And it can get me in trouble, but most of the time it just gets me ignored.   I was thinking about this as I sit in the Maple Leaf lounge in YYZ (Toronto) waiting for my flight to take me home and finding myself sucked into doing this blog yet again.   Anyway, back to letters.   Some years back, I was inspired to write a letter to a company named Reckitt Benkiser, which as everyone knows, is the global conglomerate that controls our hot sauce supply – as […]

Okay fine. Let me have it. I know. I totally whiffed on my Super Bowl prediction and Patrick Mahomes did Patrick Mahomes nonsense when it counted and then some guy grabbed a short and it was all over for the Eagles.   Sigh, Eagles, sigh. On the way to history. Sigh, Eagles, Sigh. Give up a touchdown, two or three. Miss a tackle, hold a shirt. And wave the Eagles bye. Sigh, Eagles, sigh. Not today for victory. E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles!   I hope I didn’t ruin the song too much. But I have to earn […]

It’s the most wonderful time, of the year! It is, isn’t it?   That’s right, Super Bowl Sunday! The day of days. The culmination of all the hard work I have done since September. Forcing myself seemingly day after day to watch football games, read football news, talk about football, PVR football and bet on football. And let me tell you, I am a master of all of these. Except the betting part. That really didn’t go as planned. But I did all my bets using crypto that my buddy Sam Bankman-Fried asked me to […]

It is interesting, to me at least, how as I prepare to transition this blog to a bi-weekly missive I seem to encounter all these “annual traditions” that I have somehow fallen into which of course prevent me from doing anything new, taking a break and refreshing myself.   Let’s look at early February for example. Some things in this month never seem to change.   First, we have the ritualistic annihilation of energy markets, as the financial markets, disconnected as they are from the physical markets and reality, pound away on energy prices, driven […]

OK, OK. I know. OK? I said I was going to go bi-weekly. And I will. Maybe in two weeks.   But unfortunately, the activity I was going to do instead of writing a blog – going to the gym for an extended workout to watch the end of the Netflix series I’ve been binging (The Recruit – quite good) – got rudely shunted to the side when the gym posted a notice that there would be no water available at the gym, all day.   And if you know me, and you know how […]

How are your New Year’s resolutions working out? I notice that there are a lot more people at the gym these days, so it’s working so far for one group of people. Only 20 days in, I know, but they are hard at it so far so full credit to them.   My resolutions? Comme ci, comme ça.   I made a number of resolutions and so far, it’s a decidedly mixed bag of success. I won’t get into the personal ones (be a nicer person, ski more), but an important one I made was […]

Well, here we are people. Your favourite time of year. That brief moment in time where I seem like a prescient genius. That shiny little nanosecond where I am on the front of the Titanic, a veritable King of the Forecasting World before it all comes apart in a ritual of self-loathing and abject humiliation.     That’s right, it’s the Fearless Forecast! Brought to you by the same people who brought you $90 oil in 2017 and perpetually optimistic forecasts as to the direction of natural gas prices.     You may not know […]

Alrighty then. That’s it. It’s over. Done. Finito. Tripped the light fantastic. Passed into history. Over and out. Gonzo. Never to be seen or spoken of again. That, as they say, is it.   And not a moment too soon because in a word, 2022 was awful. And terrible. And in many ways fantastically awesome.   This, my first blog of the year, is where I review my Fearless Forecast from last year, take some lumps and celebrate some triumphs. And I will still do that. But first, I need to acknowledge some pretty spectacular […]

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 2021 at this time everyone was feeling upbeat and constructive on Canadian energy, Ukraine was still relatively free of Russian aggression, FTX and SBF were just […]

Hear ye, hear ye. I bring to you, upon this, the 9th day before Christmas, a purloined list of characters both naughty and nice, as well as some ideas for gifts for our favourite characters and influencers from the year just past. And to be fair, there is no shortage, at all, of worthy and unworthy recipients of the Big Guy’s largesse or ironic gifts intended to be lessons for one and all.   It has been an eventful year. Across the world, leaders and followers have done their best to keep us entertained if […]

This week is all about my top 10 Christmas movies but I have been intrigued by the recent excitement about AI, namely ChatGPT, which everyone seems to be using to fart around on Twitter or avoid work.   Personally, I was hoping that I could get it to think of and write a blog for me, but that was not in the cards, at least at this stage of my understanding how it works.   Undeterred, I decided to let it write some clever vignettes for me while I gathered my movie thought, so I […]

Well, now that our friends down South have finally finished celebrating Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Whittling Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and Frugal Friday, 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. Maybe it’s the annual Hallmark channel assault of Christmas movies or the lights and the trees that have sprung up […]

Looking back through the last few blogs and forward to the Holiday season, I realize that I have spent a fair bit of time yapping about politics, crypto, scandal and the usual grab bag of topics.   This means of course that I have drifted far afield from the original purpose and raison d’etre of the blog, which is of course the energy industry. And not just “that” energy industry, meaning oil, but the entire energy industry, including tilting windmills, rusty solar panels, nuclear Armageddon, unaffordable heat pumps, poorly located geothermal, fantastical hydrogen, over-budget hydro, […]

Alright folks, I am back from Phoenix and seeing Elton John in concert (did I mention he says hi?) and I am ready to continue my epic run of avoiding talking about anything to do with COP27, because as you know, I find anything to so with international conferences supremely annoying. How annoy7ing? Annoying enough that I am at a loss as to what to write about I am so hot under the collar.   Actually, that’s not true at all. I’m not writing anything about COP27 because I find it boring and inconsequential and […]

Shorter blog this week and a day late. Mainly because I didn’t want to do it yesterday (November 11, Remembrance Day) and also because I am on a quick trip to see Elton John in concert for the first time.   And in honour of that concert, I am going to go through the setlist and give all of you some insight into what those Elton John songs were actually about.   Madman Across the Water   This one is a classic early Elton song and we all know who it is about. It’s about […]

The week after Halloween is a weird time in the Crude Observations world as I scurry around cleaning up all the ghouls and goblins in preparation for a full on blitz of Christmas blogs (we are mere weeks away from the Advent Calendar and Top Movie list!). On top of that, there is quite often a massive snowfall in Calgary that paralyzes the entire city which forgets year in and year out that anytime after you shut off the porchlight on October 31 and the last teenager dressed in a hoody eggs your house because […]

The last Friday blog of October is always a special one around here, because it is one that allows me to engage in some levity and scathing yet pithy political satire and commentary. Statements that are (mostly) free from judgement, recrimination and retaliation from the targets of my slings and arrows. Why would that be you may ask and what makes this time of year different from all the others? Well let me enlighten you friends.     First off, the targets themselves are just sitting ducks at the best of times, but this go […]

Another week gone by and another crisis. This time in the United Kingdom. It had something to do with a head of lettuce. Do I care about this much? I don’t know. It’s hard to care about any of these crises that seem to come with such regularity that it seems we should be much more concerned if we were to suddenly find ourselves besieged by weeks of calm.   At any rate, Liz Truss is out, she lasted 4 Scaramucci’s and was bested by greens, just not that kind. Speaking of heads of lettuce, […]

So it’s been a pretty eventful week since Canadians settled around their dining room tables to eat a little turkey and, if they were in Toronto, to also eat a little humble pie as the beloved Jays were swept aside like so much garbage in their Wild Card series with the Seattle Mariners. Wait. What? They lost to the Mariners? Ha! That’s almost as embarrassing as the Leafs losing to the Canadiens in the NHL season opener! What? That happened too?   Sheesh, I’m sorry. At least in the rest of Canada nothing untoward happened. […]

Another week of perfect Calgary fall weather in the books and here we are, Thanksgiving Weekend. That special time of year where we as Canadians take stock of the hand that has been dealt us and enumerate all the ways we feel thankful for being able to live in what could be the greatest country on earth, if we weren’t so addicted to mediocrity.   But I digress. That is in fact just my own oft-voiced opinion and many people disagree with me, which is fair, since polite disagreement is the foundation for discussion, understanding […]

Three more months. That’s all there is to this miserable year. Three more months until my Fearless Forecast, such as it was, is assigned to the raging dumpster fire of shattered dreams – exactly where it belongs.   While usually around this time of year I am celebrating my unique genius for predicting the future and basking in the praise of one and all for what is, truly, a gift, instead I am sitting here, a broken shell of a prognosticator. Where once I was compared to the Sage of Omaha, instead I am the […]

I know you are sitting on the edges of your seats to know who won the Trivia contest from last week and to see the answer key, but first I wanted to share with you a word about energy prices on this first day of Autumn 2022.     Aaaaaaggggghhhhh!     Phew, just needed to get that out of my system. So, what the heck is happening to oil prices? I wish I could tell you. It’s been quite the week, with the shot being the US Fed dropping an interest rate anvil on […]

Earlier this week I saw a Tweet about the price of oil that went something like this:   Monday – bad news out of Asia, oil price opens weak, stocks slump Tuesday – Supply constraints, China may open up – price rallies, stocks rally Wednesday – More price positivity, now we’re cooking! Thursday – Biden this, Iran that, see ya later gains Friday – I give up, better luck next week.   And based on this week’s action and last week’s and the week before, this is pretty much the treadmill we have been on. […]

As an energy industry participant, investor, lover and hater I spend a lot of my time immersed in the minutiae of the energy industry, the oil price, its movements, the price of natural gas and its irrational gyrations and all the factors that push and pull these magnificent commodities in often infuriating and counter-intuitive directions on a daily if not hourly basis.   It is not uncommon for my business partner to have to turn off BNN because I am unhingedly yelling at yet another of the procession of uninformed talking heads they bring on […]

Ah Labour Day. The last day of summer. That annual celebration of the righteousness of the downtrodden worker, the brave collectives, union members putting it all on the line day after day in order to enrich the greedy corporate capitalist fat cats who live for exploiting the masses.   And which union am I talking about most specifically here? Why none other than the NFLPA (NFL Players Association) and their hardworking members as they head into what is the 103rd season of NFL football.   As most of you know, I am a huge NFL […]

I know I’m supposed to be on summer hiatus and preparing for my big Labour Day blog where I lay out some thoughts on what to look out for during the balance of the year, but unfortunately, some recent events have caused me to get off the floaty and come out of the pool and scribble a few words about the state of the world. In the spirit of Pool Boy and Hot Dad Summer, I will keep this short and pithy.   First off, let me address the obvious frog in the pool. Yes. […]

Yay! I’m back baby and fully refreshed and full of thoughts about things and stuff and I’m ready to share them with you in this overly long blog. Couple of tips as you’re reading. The first part is some pithy observations that come out of my recent trip across the pond as they say. Main observation? Europe is crowded and there are lots of stray cats. Everywhere.   The second part of the blog, which is long and boring, represents my unorganized stream of consciousness thoughts on the race to be the next leader of […]

I know I said I was going to reduce the blog to once every two weeks during the summer and rest assured, I plan on doing that, but for now I am still going strong. Expect that next week you won’t hear from me, and maybe not the week after. Why you ask? Well, yours truly is taking his family on a much-needed extended vacation. Here’s hoping it can at least be relaxing.   I say that because the last little while has been anything but relaxing. Whether it’s our energy markets being completely schizophrenic […]

I kinda wish it was. Don’t you? What do I wish was over? The year. It’s hard to imagine that just a short six months into the new year, my forecast has been taken out behind the woodshed and struck repeatedly upside the head until it collapsed in a sobbing mess of shattered hopes, broken dreams and deflated hubris.   Sure, directionally I have gotten some things right and I may be close to my year end forecast for average oil prices, but nowhere did I ever think I would get there through penny stock […]

Today is one of those glorious historical anomalies for the Crude Observations blog that some people might call a coincidence but that I consider to be a Gregorian twist of fate. As I described last week, I have many traditions for the blog including the birthday blog, the review of my terrible forecast blog and the Canada Day blog. And in most circumstances, it is rare for the blog to fall on the day for one of these traditions yet this year, it has fallen on the day for two traditions so I am presented […]

Well folks, here it is. That time of year where we all hopefully are starting to wind down. Kids are coming out of school, people are getting excited for their upcoming vacations, assuming that they have an up to date passport and all of Calgary is preparing for Stampede in their own unique way. Whether that is dusting off the cowboy suits for another year of fun or high-tailing it out of town doesn’t really matter – I’m all about tradition.   Another tradition this time of year is the ritual bloodletting for people foolish […]

Open Letter to Joe, Justin and whoever is in charge of the EU   Stop. Just stop.   What part of the Titanic movie was so hard for you to understand? The poor street urchin and grifter seducing the hot bored society girl or the behemoth unsinkable ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean because of monumental stupidity and hubris.   Please tell me it’s the latter, because if it’s the former, then what you are doing is intentional.   Look, I get it. The climate matters. CO2 matters. Reducing CO2 matters. Doing something […]

Where last week I chose an opportune time to toot our own horn about some of the deals we have done recently, this week I’m going to take a slightly different tack and talk about deal flow and M&A in general, the current market and some tried and true bits of advice.   I promise that next week I will get back to discussing the state of the energy industry, making fun of various levels of government and politicians and further postulating on what our soon-to-be post-pandemic, inflationary, rising interest rate new world order world […]

I often get asked about the current state of the M&A market. In Alberta. In energy services. In Canada. In general. These questions come from private equity firms, lawyers, prospective clients, current clients, lenders, family, friends. Still waiting on media questions, but maybe that can wait.   My universal stock answer is that “it depends” and that for every business at any time there is a buyer.   Then I typically get asked about valuations, which is a legitimate question at this point in any cycle – late stage for tech, early stages for energy […]

So we all know that one of the crazier conspiracy theories around is that the World Economic Forum is some form of Trojan Horse organization whose sole purpose is to infiltrate world governments  and influence them into adopting a new world order under which we, the mere proletariat, will be enslaved and forced to bet vaccinated and reduce our carbon footprint until such point in time that we cease to exist.   And they do this of course by hosting a bunch of rich people at a posh mountain retreat in Davos, Switzerland in an […]

Ah, Friday May 20. May Long. The bestest long weekend of the year for us Canadians. For any number of reasons. Primarily it is the first long weekend of the year where we aren’t typically house bound. Secondly, because of history.   What history you ask? Well let me edumacate you.   We used to call it Victoria Day in honour of the birthday of Queen Victoria who ruled the Commonwealth for what, 250 years prior to Queen Elizabeth the Second and just after the 1500 year reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. I’m sure […]

Dear Bitcoin and crypto investors. I’m sorry. Who could have seen this coming just a few months ago? I mean it’s not like interest rate hikes, potential recessions, inflation, war, famine, pestilence and an energy crisis were all happening at the same time right? There was no market “signal” that the risk trade was coming to a sudden and terrifying end.   Well of course all the signs were there, they were as obvious as the fact that a PDF cartoon of a monkey smoking a f-ing joint wasn’t worth millions of dollars. And that […]

What day of May is it, I’m confused. 6th?  8th? Too many numbers.   Or is it Cinco de Mayo? A celebration of Mexico defeating France in some war that no one in Mexico really cares about? But that has been coopted in the United States as a super convenient numerical excuse to drink margaritas and eat mass-produced tacos? Sign me up!     Or May the 4th, the day when we celebrate the force and Yoda and 3, maybe 4 good Star Wars movies out of 10 (Empire Strikes Back is the best BTW, I […]

Because I have a deal closing soon and this whole Muskitter or Twelon deal seems to be all anyone wants to talk about, I thought I would avoid serious stuff and carry on the tradition of the tongue in cheek April blog to the very end of the month.   Because you know what they say:   April is tough and nasty or so they say But I don’t care, ‘cause on the morrow It’s gonna by May!   Anyway.   From Chaucer (he dropped the iambic pentameter hammer on April showers) to folksy sayings […]

Canadian Energy producers are gearing up to announce in the next few weeks an all-time obscene gusher of profits. There is going to be so much money flowing, Tony Montana would be embarrassed at the riches. Donald Trump himself will have never seen anything quite so yuge and John Paul Getty will be rolling over in his grave and pinching John D. Rockefeller in the tuckus.   Notwithstanding this veritable tsunami of cash, Canadian E&P’s continue to struggle for the respect they deserve on the national, global and investment stage. So bereft of ESG bonafides […]

You’d think with a title like that this would be a blog about the Federal government and their approval of the Bay du Nord deepwater oil and gas project and you’d be right. But you would also be wrong. While I am very much wanting to wax eloquently about the most significant upstream oil project approval in Canada in more than a decade, I have realized that I am nowhere near well enough informed about this particular one to share an opinion. So I am doing the unprecedented – I am turning to an actual […]

Alrighty then. Enough procrastination. As many of you are no doubt aware, I have sneakily taken the last few weeks off to lazily do some Spring Break stuff, recycle old blogs (that Rolling Stones playlist is the bomb though) and play a lame April Fool’s Day prank by pretending I was quitting the whole writing gig.   Joke’s on you though because I haven’t quit! Aha! Joke’s on me as well because my Spring Break was anything but relaxing as my family and I embarked on a COVID influenced version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles […]

That’s April Fool’s. Can’t believe you fell for it.   We will return to our regularly scheduled programming next week when I am no longer a road warrior.   Fearless Forecast review. Shudder.

Oy. It’s been a hell of week. But it’s over. And now I need to do a blog. But after this week, my level of motivation is low.   Why? Because after the trials of Hercules (sort of) we finally got to start spring break. If you are in that rarified circle of confidence, you know it’s been a heck of a ride to get here.   So that buys me a modicum of laziness. As a result, I am going to rerun one of my favourite blogs from the last few years.   But […]

Ah, NCAA March Madness. How I have missed you. It is hard to believe it has been a full year since I have been able to sit down and listen to the sweet and somewhat jarring sound of squeaky shoes on a gym floor as my favourite sporting event unfolds in front of me on office TVs, secretive channel switching at home and late-night PVR’d buzzer beaters. Last year’s tourney of course was a muted affair, played in front of sparse crowds and all pandemicky, so this year of course is probably the most highly […]

Well my peeps, here we are at the two year anniversary of lap-top closing day (officially March 13) and the unofficial two week anniversary (if you can call it that) of the criminal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and I am wondering if and when we will ever be free of either. Not that I am in any way giving up on a resolution to either, I am nothing if not an optimist, I am just starting to wonder if we are so willing to accept one as being endemic, will our attention span […]

Another week gone by and the outrage continues in Ukraine. The relentless march of the Russian forces continues and the inevitability of it all playing out on television is, quite frankly, soul-crushing. This is not going to be a short war. The conquest of the cities may come faster than people think, but the insurgency is going to last a long time. Putin’s folly will be his downfall although at the current moment, it doesn’t appear that the reality of the situation has set in with the general Russian populace, who remain stuck in a […]

Well, here we go. The first of many blogs that will thankfully not be about trucker convoys and occupations of national capitals. Instead, this blog will be in part about… the prospective occupation of another national capital.   We have all seen the horrific images and accounts of the unprovoked, international order defying and completely perplexing Russian invasion of Ukraine. And we all sit helplessly while on the other side of the world, the comfortable détente that we all thought was permanent is brutally shattered by the actions of one man and one man only […]

They’re talking about us! They’re really talking about us! Yay! Oh wait. That’s not what I wanted…   What exactly is he on about now you might ask? And you would be justified in asking. Allow me to explain. These past few weeks has seen something that, in my many years as a self-aware denizen of this country we call Canada, I have rarely been witness to. And that is the rest of the world actually paying attention to Canada. Unfortunately, in this instance, it isn’t in a good way.   Usually, Canada hits the […]

That’s right, Super Bowl Sunday! The day of days. The culmination of all the hard work I have done since September. Forcing myself seemingly day after day to watch football games, read football news, talk about football, PVR football and bet on football. And let me tell you, I am a master of all of these. Except the betting part. That didn’t go so well until I cleaned a buddy’s clock in the divisional round (sorry for bringing it up).   At any rate, if you know me, you know I am a sports lunatic. […]

Last week I elected to chat a bit about a variety of things happening in the world at large that were affecting energy prices and that we should pay attention to as the year progresses. And less than a week later, we continue to see, during what is, to put it mildly, a rocky start to the year, events very much outside of our control that will continue to affect the oil and gas industry for years to come, including, as always, the actions of malign actors with sinister intent. Not to be outdone by […]

What an eventful week it has been in the markets and the energy world as we all collectively held our breath waiting on the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada to do the inevitable and bring interest rate Armageddon to the over-heated asset bubble housing and NFT markets of North America and cause a collective bout of stress-related acid reflux for over-levered consumers across the continent.   After all, inflation is the scourge of modern times and it is long past time to slay this demon once and for all. Except of course they […]

Here we are, three weeks into the New Year and I’m already struggling for original content. It’s a tough go, but I promise all of you I will struggle through. It’s just going to be that kind of year. Fortunately, I made a personal resolution last year that I was going to write shorter, punchier blogs. Well except for last week – that was a forecast and there was a lot of ground to cover. But shorter blogs means more time for me to do the deep dive research required to write the blog and […]

This is it folks.   You may not know it, but this is what you have all been waiting for since I started to mail it in as of early December. You see, I have a plan when I do all those Christmas blogs – movie ratings, naughty and nice lists, poems. All part of my super secret plan to observe the world, come up for air and determine for you, my dear readers, what exactly the heck is going to happen in the upcoming year.     This means that all those investment decisions, […]

Well folks, I’m back. Here it is 2022 finally and ye Olde Crude Observations is set to make its triumphant return. As is customary, I take a few weeks off at the end of the year to recharge batteries (just not in my car), spend time with family and friends over the Christmas and New Year’s break and, if I’m lucky, travel to the United States and pick up vitamin D the old-fashioned way in Phoenix.   Unfortunately, nasty old Seamus Murphy O’Micron had different ideas this year so instead of all the accoutrements of […]

Well here we are, Christmas Eve. The night before the Day. The shopping is finally stopping and the family is sitting around being uber-lazy and getting ready for the turkey and present show.   I know I promised last Friday was the last blog for the year but I can’t help myself. I am a creature of habit and tradition.   And my 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 […]

Another eventful year has come and is almost gone. Across the world, leaders and followers have done their best to keep us entertained if not firmly on our toes. Whether it’s an Almost Best Summer Ever or an insurrection executed by the grossly incompetent or a tanker getting stuick in the Suez Canal as the ultimate metaphor for supply chain disruptions, we have without a doubt seen a decade’s worth of ups and downs in one lonely year.   Market gyrations, pandemics, elections, insurrections, conflict, Bitcoin, Trump, sky-high electricity prices, coal recovery, natural gas rallies, […]

ThSo how is everyone doing?   Oil is back above $70. For now. So all is right with the world. For now.   Gas disappoints. For now.   Inflation bites. For now.   Politics is once again fun and interesting. No, not really.   The Conservative Party of Canada’s finance critic is so for out of his depth on his file that he needs Michelle Rempel-Garner, who apparently has a single mom friend in Kelowna who buys $2500 jerseys for her spouse, to step in and save him from further humiliation at the hands of […]

Warning – unedited stream of consciousness, just like Biden’s energy policies…   It’s been an eventful week hasn’t it, what with the Comicon variant rolling in and upsetting the entire global economy and throwing the energy sector into a major tizzy as well as the Biden administration trying their best to fumble their way through a politically expedient oil sector demonization play. Never mind the intellectual genius of the conservative party of Canada trying to blame inflation on pretty much every factor except for the ones that actually, you know, cause inflation.   It’s hard […]