Crude Observations

Welcome dear readers to what is my favourite day of the year – February 30th, the day after Leap Day which as we all know is the greatest holiday of them all, what with the appearance of Leap Day William and the efforts to avoid the coming of March since as we all know “Real life is for March!”.   And in the spirit of that day, I’m going to something I only do every four years, publish a stream of consciousness rant, mainly because I can. But before I do that, I just want […]

So last week, I didn’t write a blog. I am hoping that someone at least noticed that because I do put a lot of effort into the blog and I like to get the pat on the back and the “atta boys” I occasionally receive. There was of course a particular reason I didn’t compose a blog and I will get into it in a bit, because it is typical for how we live our lives.   But let me first say that February blogs are the hardest. It’s the shoulder season for blogging – […]

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. Fortunately, all I lost was a couple of Bitcoins and some NVIDIA stock, so I’m all […]

Time for the annual Groundhog Day post.   And for once, I am doing it on the actual day of groundhogging. In fact, by the time I push send on the old Mailchimp interface, all of the hogs from the ground across all of North America will have opined on whether we will get an early spring or suffer in winter’s dark and frozen hell into eternity.   And as I contemplate Groundhog day, I am, as always, reminded about the many ways the expression “the more things change the more they stay the same” […]

So, I guess I am taking a break this week. Still spent from the whole Forecast thing, my Air Canada correspondence (I would note I received a polite and informative reply – nothing is changing but routes are constantly being re-assessed, so I hold out hope), work and, if I’m being honest, a 36 hour jaunt to Toronto to visit the Bata Shoe Museum and eat bacon at a venerable and iconic Toronto greasy spoon.   This doesn’t mean that I am not paying attention to what is happening around the world, I most assuredly […]

So, the aftermath of the Fearless Forecast blog, which sucks out a lot of energy from yours truly is really akin to a massive hangover. I am devoid of ideas, writing skill, desire – you name it. The random number generator is spent.   And yes, I apologize for the worst Super Bowl call in all of forecasting history. I picked the Cowboys because they seemed good and were likely to go far. I never anticipated that a bunch of pro athletes would have that little motivation or competitive fire and get completely whipped in […]

Well, here we are people. Your favourite time of year. That brief moment in time where I seem like the prescient genius I actually am 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, public, humiliation.     That’s right, it’s the Fearless Forecast! Brought to you by the same hapless scallywag who brought you $90 oil in 2017, bullish investment calls on Canadian rig operators and perpetually optimistic forecasts as to […]

Thank god that’s over   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, 2023 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 […]

  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 2022 at this time everyone was feeling upbeat and constructive on Canadian energy, but the rest of the world was sweating it out through runaway […]

Hear ye, hear ye. I bring to you, upon this, the 10th 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.   Upon review of this list, we will be able to decide whether the named individual is to be bequeathed a gift […]

This week is supposed to be all about my top 10 Christmas movies but I have to take a few minutes to do an aside about the recent government policy announcements regarding emissions in general and the energy sector in particular.   For those of you who are living under a rock (or just don’t care) the Canadian Liberal minority government has long teased everyone who would listen about upcoming regulations targeted specifically at the evil oil and gas sector to force it to reduce emissions related to methane and carbon dioxide – both of […]

Public Service Announcement. Before I get into my annual recycling of holiday blog ideas, I first wanted to say a few words about COP 28. Actually, who am I kidding. Is anyone else as fed up with this annual boondoggle as I am? 70,000 people descending on Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates to finger tent and act oh so pious and concerned about emissions and the environment, hosted by one of the largest oil producers in the world in a city that by all rights shouldn’t even exist because it’s in a freaking desert. […]

Sadly for the blogging world, I seem to have run out of time this week to do anything spectacular plus I need to rest up my creative energies so that I can do the sprint to the end of the year in peak condition. You may not know it yet but some of the best material is coming for you including, maybe, an Advent Calendar, a movie ranking, a naughty or nice list and not least a kick-ass Christmas Eve poem.   Of course in this calm before the storm I need to find some […]

Well hot on the heels of last week’s blog celebrating some of our recent client successes I find myself staring blankly at my monitor wondering what on earth I can write about this week, which is traditionally the last slow week before the chaos of the holiday season is upon us as I navigate in quick succession American Thanksgiving (it’s all about the football to me), a milestone birthday for my lovely wife, a variety of work related holiday gatherings, my dad’s birthday, Christmas and a much needed escape to the desert for New Year’s. […]

Last week I had the opportunity to regale you all with anecdotes and cautionary tales dealing not only with soul-crushing and immovable bureaucracy but also the idiosyncrasies of deal making and a select few of the many, many roadblocks and deal-breakers you can see along the way. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. In fact, some deals go so smoothly it seems like no effort is required. Or so I’m told.   Which brings me to this week where I’m going to spend a little time tooting our horn, which ironically is […]

As always, the week after Halloween is a weird time in the Crude Observations world as I try to wrap my head around how I am ever going to prepare for a full on blitz of Christmas blogs (we are mere weeks away from the Advent Calendar and Top Movie list!) while juggling an actual work and family life. Sometimes I like to mix in a bit of travel just for fun – and I did just that this year – in fact I took the red eye after Halloween to Toronto. How much fun […]

First off, I apologize for not doing a blog last week. I was off to Vegas to see U2 at the Sphere and it was every bit as awesome and spectacular as you can imagine, if not more so. It was also the first cross-border trip my wife and I have taken where we left our kids at home to their own devices (all Apple) and I have to say it was completely worth it. U2 and Vegas were awesome. The food was great and the company was spectacular and without peer! And, the house […]

Finally! That’s right, finally. As far as I can tell, this is the first Friday the 13th of the year which means it’s the first time I have done a blog on a Friday the 13th since the last time I did one. Having only one Friday the 13th has to be some kind of statistical anomaly, although I’m sure if I looked, I would be able to find one in the recent past. OK, now I have to look… dang it, I was wrong. There was a Friday the 13th… in January. The day […]

Canadian Thanksgiving already? Where did the time go! I feel like it was just 3 months ago that I was on an airplane going on vacation and writing my forecasting obituary. Q2 was not solid. And I have this gut feeling that Q3 isn’t going to be much better, notwithstanding the scintillating run-up in oil prices that we saw in September (only to give back… in the last few days).   But I have to do my review. Even if it’s a long weekend and even if this turkey, to belabour the metaphor just a […]

Well, here it is, the last blog of Q3. Too early to do my Report Card on the Fearless Forecast and, due to circumstances beyond my control, too late to do something completely original from scratch as my professional, M&A life continues to interfere with my blogging side-hustle.   What do I mean by that? Simple really. We have been busy. Really busy. As of Sunday (well 11:59 PM Saturday), we will have closed three significant transactions on behalf of clients since August 11th. This is quite the stretch, especially when you consider that summer […]

Well, this has certainly been an interesting week in good old Canada for what is supposed to be the “short blog”. I mean between the spectre of countries conducting extra-national assassinations in our own backyard, a continued shakedown of Ottawa by Alberta, ongoing Chinese election interference, the Ontario Greenbelt fiasco and the ongoing persistent cost of living crisis, it’s hard to know what to focus on.   I mean, I can’t do oil prices because I celebrated that short-lived $90 juggernaut last week. And I won’t do gas prices because… Well we all know why. […]

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 talking heads they bring on to […]

True to form I do a Labour Day blog every year and then find myself, as with every early September, inundated with all sorts of nonsense like “client demands” and “kids back in school”. Then I’m stuck, late on a Friday afternoon, typing a blog that I have no sense of where it’s going to go or whether I should even continue.   Mainly because I am searching for a topic, but also because the freaking Rugby World Cup is on TV and it’s the opening match featuring New Zealand playing the host French national […]

It’s Labour Day!   Ah Labour Day. 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 104th season of NFL football.   As most of you know, I am a huge NFL fan. […]

Note – as I write this, Canada’s forest fire season from hell continues to rage unabated. We at Stormont have clients, friends and family all affected by the current evacuation and emergency orders in Yellowknife NWT and the Kelowna area. Please consider a donation to the Red Cross to assist those in need across the country. Links for 2 options are below – one directed at NWT efforts, the other a collective “Canada” option. I did both. Together we can make a difference.   RED CROSS CANADA – NWT   RED CROSS CANADA – WILDFIRE […]

Last year, I took my family on an epic vacation and when I returned, I did a short mail-it-in blog that reflected some thoughts I had on where we had been and how moving around the world outside of our little bubble that is Calgary can offer some pretty cool perspective on the truisms that define our lives.   As I said then and will cut and paste now, perspective is everything and sometimes it is worthwhile to take yourself out of your comfort zone and look at things from the other side and you […]

So, this is what it has come to. I am on a plane, going on vacation, and planning to take significant time off doing a blog and I have come to the crushing realization that I forgot to do my Fearless Forecast second quarter review.   Okay, maybe I didn’t forget, maybe I just don’t want to face the facts on how bad my year is going. That seems more apropos of how things have been going. I do have tremendous confidence in the third and fourth quarters though so this should be the last […]

It’s so lonesome on the saddle since my horse died…   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. Although I did miss last week, and 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 […]

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 wen enter the summer months, I have many traditions for the blog including the birthday blog, the review of my terrible forecast blog, the Canada Day blog and the Stampede blog. Then it’s the vacation blog. If I feel like it.   It is rare for the blog to fall on the actual day for one of these traditions yet this year, it […]

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 costumes 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 […]

It has been a rough week here in anonymous blog land as we/I and a collective group of named and anonymous Twitter users and actual people said goodbye to one of my regular readers, critics and promoters of this blog – an anonymous Twitter account whose handle was @SadBillAckman or SBA as we all knew him.   Sad Bill was an anonymous “Alt” account that belonged to an actual person named Mark, an Edmonton-based energy sector worker who was also an active Twitter account in all the same spaces as Bill. Mark was young and […]

Another shorter blog this week folks as I have just recently returned from a fever dream of a trip inspired by none other than Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel of American Discovery and road tripping – On The Road. And the reason the blog is shorter of course is because I was away so long, I avoided doing any actual work, so I have many emails to return. Oh, and in this glorious retelling, there are no hallucinogenic drugs and other illicit activities. Sorry, this the G-Rated version.   To set the scene, I am vehicularly […]

And just like that, it’s over. The Alberta election has come and gone and lo and behold, we have a Danielle Smith led UCP majority, albeit a slightly smaller if not less humble majority. At the latest count the UCP won 49 seats and the NDP 38 making this one of the slimmest majorities in Alberta political history, which is kinda cool if you think about it, even if the UCP supporters are terrified of the commie pinko NDP hordes nipping at their heels and the NDP supporters are crying in their pillows about what […]

This is it. The last blog before the big day. And it’s a long one. A doozy. Many, many words. I know I have been threatening it for some time, but this is the day I have to actually make my prediction in this godforsaken Alberta election. I can’t avoid it anymore So I’m going to do that. Soon. But first, I feel I must veer off topic and tell a wee story.   This blog started about eight years ago. Under oddly similar circumstances. You see, at that time, in 2015, Alberta was going […]

Ah, May Long. The best weekend of the year for us Canadians. 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 there was someone else in […]

Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate. Which really should be all of us, except of course Frankenstein’s monster who was kind of assembled, but I guess all the parts had maternal origins? Sorry. Good lord, where in the world was I actually going with that?   At any rate, happy Mother’s Day and don’t forget to think of all those whose mothers are no longer with us and spouses, siblings and progeny who are themselves mothers. That’s a lot of celebrating to do but in all seriousness, why not? Make it a week, a […]

It’s been four months now since I promised to do a bi-weekly blog and so far my track record… well it kinda sucks. Apparently I am unable to stop writing this thing and sharing my various opinions with all of you. Last week was supposed to be a week off and it wasn’t. I think I missed the week prior. Who knows anymore!   This week I am going to try and be more positive than some of my last few week, since a few eeks ago was an “airing of grievances” of sorts. To […]

Vontae Mack. No matter what.   Wow. That’s cryptic. Hey, did anyone notice I wasn’t here last week? Because I wasn’t. I hope some of you noticed. I would be awfully sad if you didn’t. I was off tending to some personal business and, whilst cooling my heels in a hotel room far, far away, I decided that I would not publish a blog that day. To be honest, I wrote one. But I put it in my proverbial pocket for another day.   And here I find myself yet again contemplating what I should […]

Looking back through my blog history gives a really interesting perspective on the strange ways the brain works. Well, mine at least. I know I spend a lot of time and effort working on the Fearless ForecastTM that I hope no one ever takes investment advice from… because. Then at specific points during the year, I self-assess thus proving my point about not taking that forecast as investment advice.   All these things take time and an emotional investment into the process. This of course leads to the inevitable letdown the following week where I […]

Happy Friday everyone, I hope it is good no matter which version of a religious observance or long weekend you are currently choosing to practice. We are 100% non-denominational, fully religiously tolerant and even accepting of the fact that the most deeply thoughtful and introspective thing you may do on this whole long weekend celebration of resurrection is watch Tiger Woods try and resurrect his career one wincing in excruciating pain swing after another at this year’s Masters tournament.   It is also a Good Friday because today I get to report back to all […]

Look, I know I promise every week I am going to make this a bi-weekly thing and I swear I will do it eventually but there was some pretty big news that happened this week that I feel needs some analysis. And this big news and analysis is distracting me from a number of really important things, namely my in depth first quarter review of my Fearless Forecast (head’s up – it ain’t gonna be pretty) and that thing I do in the office… what’s it called…? Oh yeah – work!   So what was […]

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. I know we are already a week into the tournament and all the brackets are busted, even mine, but this tournament has been pretty exciting with many Cinderella […]

Well, this week I feel it is time to revisit something I wanted to make into a tradition but failed a bit at because I of course got lazy and forgot. That’s right, it is time to acknowledge an event that is universally loved by seemingly everyone I have ever known and, let’s be honest here, everybody else.   I’m talking of course about #CERAweek – which is shorthand for the annual springtime convention held by S&P Global that Features a veritable who’s who of government officials, energy sector participants, professional convention goers, wannabes, gonnabes, […]

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 […]