Crude Observations

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 […]

This is starting to sound like the proverbial broken record, but yet again this is going to be another short blog since I am once again on the road – had to make a quick family visit to Toronto. And by quick, I mean quick. I am back home tomorrow. Ironically not for Thanksgiving, because we did that in October and I’m Canadian after all. No, this was purely a visit for the sake of visiting. Although given that the Alberta vaccine QR code generator apparently is on the fritz, who knows, right?   At […]

This blog may turn out to be rather short, as I have a closing today and, to be completely honest, have not had much of a chance to think about, organize or otherwise compose a blog, never mind have any specific thoughts about a blog.   Given that the week that started out with me being almost stranded on a stretch of mountain highway out of cell range and in a snowstorm, taking 9 hours to go 125 kilometres out and back in a typical Alberta November garbage weather (sorry, I was in BC for […]

Well good day folks! Apologies for being a day late. I hope everyone had a good week. I certainly did, helped along by last week’s cathartic rant about the absurd hypocrisy and hypocritical absurdity that is the COP26 gathering and the sanctimonious green puritans who attended it. Thankfully, it ended early so everyone got to go home and get back to the important work of, you know, actually reducing emissions.   What’s that you say? It went on for another week?   You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.   How does that happen? What […]

As some of you regular readers know, I have a thing against conferences, especially pretentious and hypocritical ones attended by the world’s wealthy and elite. I did my COP26 blog early because I knew if I did it during the actual event it would just make me mad. And you know what? It made me mad despite that.   S0 I’m going to take a moment, and a deep breath, and through stream of consciousness and likely distorted memory dump a bunch of sound bites of the contradictory and contra-indicating nonsense going on in and […]

It’s Blog time, time for a super scary Halloween edition filled with spooks, ghosts and surprises. Terrors both large and small, the usual litany of candy and trick or treating fun and, for those who want such things, scathing social commentary!   OK, maybe not so much that. It’s been an exhausting run the last few months and I’m not sure I’m fully up to the task. Maybe 62% of the way there, even though I feel like I’m only running at 38% efficiency. I guess that means that my dilithium crystals are only at […]

So after the momentous elections that we just went through, and the fiery referendum (results pending!), you would think that us folks in Alberta would be ready to pack it in and take a wee siesta for a bit. After all, how much more excitement can one take, what with a newly elected mayor, who suddenly finds herself the talk of the town, for accomplishing something that has never been done – a woman as mayor of Calgary.   Not only that, we had close to 35% participation in a referendum about stopping the shipment […]

OK, so no more cop-out blogs for at least the foreseeable future. I am instead going to try, this time around, to do a stream of consciousness style ramble, starting on one topic and moving, hopefully seamlessly, to various others in quick succession, most of them seemingly unrelated except that they probably bother me a little bit. So I guess they do have something in common after all?   COP 2162.   Or, more precisely, COP 26.   While it sounds like a bad sequel to a 1980’s Jean Claude Van Damme movie, COP 26 […]

Another week come and gone, I believe I have recovered sufficiently from the shock of being under in my gas forecast that I can take a deep breath and contemplate what this weekend is all about, and it’s not just week 5 of the NFL season. And as always around this time of year, the blog that was due on a Friday is being started on a Saturday and if I’m lucky may be finished by Monday. Which makes me the laziest writer around.   But I have an excuse. And it’s a good one. […]

Another three months gone by and it is time yet again to review where I am in my forecast. While I hate to pat myself on the back (pat, pat), I have to admit I am feeling more than a bit excited that for once I may have underestimated the commodity price deck. Given how badly I have whiffed on natural gas for the past 6 years, this turnabout is totally fairplay.   On the other hand, these high commodity prices are wreaking havoc with global energy complexes, manufacturing, pocketbooks and, perhaps, world peace. Or […]

Was it just this week that we had a federal election? Or was it this week that we had an all-out revolt in the Alberta-leading (un)United Conservative Party? Or was it both. It’s been a thing hasn’t it? Our fearless leader Justin Trudeau tripped over the finish line first in the least interesting election in Canadian history, the implications of which I will discuss below.   Mere days later, Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta, found himself the subject of a potential non confidence vote that he deftly avoided by running over his underling, former Health […]

Alright fans, hangers on and wannabes. This is the week you have all been waiting for. The missive with the prediction. The rant on current issues and a review of our political future. A wash and rinse of the tea leaves, revealing the inner secrets of the Canadian body politic. A bona fide prognostication of epic proportions on this, the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER! Well at least the most important election of the modern era. Hmm, well maybe not. How about the most important election of the 21st century? No? ice Stephen Harper stumbled into […]

Well there I was, all ready to do my annual Election Review and Forecast (it is annual right? It certainly feels like it is) when I realized it might actually be premature and that there were other events and developments occurring around me that might be both more relevant and interesting to all of you. I mean, I know that the vagaries of our insular, parochial approach to politics and the world resonates so very strongly outside of our borders, but come on people, we just had our final debate last night and I haven’t […]

Ah Labour Day. That annual celebration of the righteousness of the downtrodden worker, the brave collectives and essential workers, putting it all on the line day after day in order to enrich the greedy capitalist fat cats who live for exploiting the masses.   Like me. I am happy to call myself a fat cat capitalist. Well at least I was until I bought into the hype and decided to buy into the latest mania – crypto currency promoted on Twitter. Oops! There goes retirement I guess. Now I’m more of a capitalist mangy feral […]

I was though, on vacation, before, but it was a pretty short one. Like the rest of the summer it’s just been a few days here and there. Why does that matter? It doesn’t really. I’m just wondering how I managed to not string together more weeks over the summer of home bound relaxation or summer in the over-priced country rental market, or days at a luxury resort somewhere.   Oh wait, I know. We are slammed. Super busy. We actually have more deals in the market at this moment in time than we have […]

Well folks, here I sit on Friday the 13th of August, a beautiful sunny day and I am busy typing away on this here summertime bi-weekly blog and searching for something that is both pithy enough to entertain you, my loyal readerships, yet brief enough that I can go outside and enjoy what could very well be the last nice weekend of the summer. Because you never know.   And that is something to be fearful of. And there is a lot of fear going around these days. Fear of the pandemic, fear of missing […]

Well here we are in Alberta, in the middle of the August Long Weekend, a traditional time of deep reflection and soul-searching, where the good people of the province take stock, peer through the haze of forest fire smoke and decide what they are going to do in the fall when they have to go to work.   True to form, our provincial government, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to smooth the way back to work by declaring that, as of August 15, the COVID pandemic is officially over and that all extra […]

I’m back! Did anyone miss me? That’s what I thought. Well I missed all of you. It has been a whole two weeks since I have written a blog and let me tell you, it was weird experience. I know I told you a month or so back that when summer arrived I was planning on switching to a every two weeks to recharge the proverbial creative batteries as they say and maybe, just maybe, do some client work. Or take time off. Or both really.   And it worked, to a certain extent. I […]

Has it been 6 months already? How time flies when your forecast is getting munched up and spat out like so much doggie kibble. I feel, rightly or wrongly, that this year has been particularly unpredictable, even if we do have the world’s most predictable politician sitting in the White House instead of that other dude.   Maybe it has something to do with Coronavirus recovery, maybe it has to do with the energy transition, I’m not 100% certain but the general sense I have is one of flux and volatility.   Or maybe I’m […]

Stuck in a hard place this week. I have two traditional blathering blogs that I do at this time of year. The first is a review of my Fearless ForecastTM, wherein I assess the damage I have done to my credibility at the halfway point of the year. The second is an annual Canada Day blog where I recycle some thoughts on this weird country we live in. My issue of course is that Canada Day is July 1, a Thursday and the end of Q2 is June 30, a Wednesday and today, of course, […]

Well folks, since last week was a review of referendum questions including that whopper that happened in 1980 in Quebec that I had to live through as a spry 15 year old budding political activist (not even remotely true BTW) and the Habs are in the Stanley Cup semi-finals, it is only appropriate that I continue this trip down memory lane.   Of course I do this every year at this time, mostly because I’m lazy and I tend to do affair amount of blog repetition, but also because summer is coming and it is, […]

Well there you go. The Alberta government has finally come up with its referendum question on equalization and has announced it to much fanfare and derision. Fanfare of course is mostly of the self-congratulatory and siloed variety as the UCP is firmly in support of the positions it supports and derives its support from the supporters who support the things they support. Derision is the highly populated domain of everyone who thinks this is just another dumb idea.   Representative democracy is a pretty cool thing when it works. Direct voting on matters of great […]

Alright, first off, let’s just get this out of the way. Toronto lost. Montreal won. Nanny nanny boo boo. In the great Canadian hockey wars this is both an expected and unexpected outcome and a restoration of order to the universe. The last Canadian hockey team to win the Stanley Cup was the Canadiens in 1993 and since then it’s been an exercize in futility for a series of wannabes. This means that in order for a Canadian team to win the Cup, it will likely have to be the Canadiens. Of course they have […]

This is one of those weirdo weeks in the energy world that bear some scrutiny and analysis, if only to offset the gleeful dunking that the environmental/energy transition movement is currently engaging in, because I feel that the celebration is premature. Kind of like the CBC and the Toronto-centric media anointing the Maple Leafs as presumptive Stanley Cup favourites while they still haven’t yet ousted the pesky but woefully over-matched Habs from the first round of the NHL playoffs (note to Canada, it is 100% fitting that the first playoff game with actual people in […]

Ah, May 21. A day leading into 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 […]

So it has been an interesting week, has it not? I think so. But then I am a bit of a an information junkie and I like the chaos that seems to surround the energy industry so I can be forgiven for getting a little too excited at times by what is most certainly excruciating iterations of drying paint to others.   One of the most fun things in the news this week for us energy losers is pipelines. All sorts of them. Pipelines that work, pipelines that aren’t built, pipelines that are partly built, […]

The other day I was looking back at some of my old blogs looking for a little inspiration and I was struck by how in the before times I spent a lot of blog space looking at numbers (not only for ordering lists) and industry statistics and making pithy or wise commentary out of those numbers. These numbers included production numbers, prices and other meaningful stats that would tickle my fancy during the week and that I felt were somehow worthy of further reflection.   Yet somewhere along the way, I got away from that […]

Howdy all, I know many of us, especially here in Canada, have a rough go of it in April, but as the Timberlake dude says, don’t worry because tomorrow “It’s Gonna be May” and not a day too soon if I may say so myself. Which I will. April generally blows for many reasons, to layer in resurgent pandemic waves (I’m looking at you India, Ontario and Alberta), Tesla earnings and a pause in the energy rally just isn’t fair. Then the Kenney government decided to charge a user fee for fun. Come on guys! […]

Well, this week is going to mark a first of sorts for this blog – I’m going to put a new tome in this writer’s oeuvre and finally 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 about the Academy Awards of course, the Oscars. The big night where the beautiful and smart people in Hollywood get together and celebrate themselves by talking about themselves and giving prizes to each other, all in the hopes that they will get noticed, either […]

You ever have one of those weeks that make you want to throw up your hands and walk away from everything? Check out and never check back in? Let someone else do your thing while you relax in the proverbial sun and enjoy bevvies in the (appropriately socially distanced of course and no more than 10 people) back yard? That would be this week. Started good, got weird, got really, really annoying. But now I am venting which is kind of a natural state for me so I suppose that’s a small win.   It’s […]

This is another of those seminal weeks in the world of sports, as it is in the world of Canadian oil and gas. Let’s get the boring part out of the way first. As most Canadians know. Well Albertans know. OK, energy sector participants then. Ahem, as most of us industry people know, the end of March and first weeks of April are what’s known as Spring Breakup. No, it’s not the time of year when investors break up with the energy sector (although it often seems that way).   No, spring break up is […]

Well folks, it’s that time of year again. Time for me to gobble some humble pie and absorb the shame that is my birthright, at least once a quarter. Yes, it is time to review where I am at in my Fearless Forecast, for better of for worse (typically for worse to be honest). Or as I call it, the Foolscast for anyone foolish enough to follow my picks.   It’s a once quarterly exercise that I both dread and relish. Dread because of the inevitable whiffs. Relish because it saves me from wracking my […]

Has there ever been a better metaphor for the energy sector writ large and Alberta’s place in it than the sight of a giant transport vessel wedged across the Suez Canal, effectively bringing to a grinding halt a significant portion of international trade and shipping, including somewhere around 2% of the daily volume of liquid fossil fuels transport (oil and LNG)? Didn’t think so.   It works on so many levels.   Are we the lineup of ships stuck behind the canal plug desperately trying to get our product to market?   Are we the […]

Ah, NCAA March Madness. How I have missed you. It is hard to believe it has been two years 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 laid low by the pandemic so this year of course is probably the most highly anticipated since the early 1990’s UNLV/Duke rematch.   […]

Over the past few months regular readers may have noticed that I have used this platform to allude to what may or may not be an emerging commodity super-cycle. Driven by gradual (or in the case of Texas, sudden) re-openings of the global economy as the vaccine rolls out and people get more comfortable being part of regular society once again, the theory is that demand for the building blocks of society will accelerate as restrictions come off.   I know many pundits and experts have modelled this as either a gradual recovery with modest […]

It’s been a weird week. I have found myself wanting to write about the current surge in oil prices which, it has been noted, are up $100 from their trailing 12 month low of -$37 a barrel. This in and of itself is a truly astounding development that flies in the face of everything we have been told about the pandemic and the drastic drop in demand (unless of course you read this blog).   But I feel I need to park that for a while and continue my journey from last week wherein I […]

This week I set out to try something a little different and wanted to bring some levity to the blog as I have the distinct impression that recent columns have been quite serious and not so much fun. This is to be expected of course given the ongoing drudgery of the pandemic, last year’s lousy energy market and, let’s get real, lots of bad news pretty much all around.   As promised, there will be some fun stuff, but it’s going to have to wait a few paragraphs because the real world has a nasty […]

Don’t you? Because well, here we are. A mere 7 weeks into 2021 and already the whole thing is going to heck in a handbasket. No, I’m not talking about the debacle that is the NHL season south of the border where games are being cancelled willy-nilly due to COVID exposure. Nor am I talking about the latest vaccine fiasco (no, there isn’t another one, it’s a figure of speech) with the Federal government dropping the ball on procurement for enough weeks to get hammered by the opposition and the provinces who will soon be […]

Well wasn’t that exciting? Another Super Bowl, another Super Bowl victory for Tom Brady. All I can say is it’s a good thing for him that the game was held when it was since, as the numbers show, he only wins championships when the price of WTI is below $60 a barrel. I say it’s a good thing because if the price signals are to believed we should break that $60 mark within weeks (if not days) as ongoing vaccination rollouts, inventory drawdowns and economic optimism all point to higher commodity prices.   In the […]

I’ve decided to take a break this week from my usual vitriol and sarcasm (well maybe I’ll save some until the end, just because). Instead, this week I want to talk about numbers. Different numbers. Lots of numbers. The best numbers. I also want to talk a bit about goats. And age. And baby goats.   Let me start with the first and most important number of the week.   55. Or Fifty-Five. LV. As in Super Bowl LV. This Sunday. Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs Kansas City Chefs (Chiefs oops… Great googly moogly). The grand […]

Last week’s blog was labelled as controversial but in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t as out there as I thought. It seems that many of the themes I brought up resonated with a lot of people from many different backgrounds and political proclivities. That said, I also received a fair bit of criticism, which I appreciate as much as support. I enjoy the dialogue and the sharing of ideas.   On a personal note, I just want to emphasize for the record that I believe I am an equal opportunity excoriator of anyone in a position […]

Warning – controversial post. I am fighting mad about this whole Keystone XL debacle but not in the way many might think. For what it’s worth, I have cooled down a bit, but I wrote it yesterday in the heat of the moment and am currently too lazy to rewrite it.   So here we are, officially two and a half days into the Biden administration and we have already managed to hit one of the forecasts I made last week. I feel like I should pat myself on the back, except disappointingly, the part […]

This is it folks. What you have all been waiting for these last few months with great anticipation and minor trepidation. Investment decisions on hold, life-changing real estate purchases pending, kids college funds in the balance. All waiting for the ethereal flight of fancy that is the annual Stormont Capital Fearless Forecast.   That’s right, not just any forecast. A FEARLESS one.   What does that mean pray-tell? Well, it means it is bold, brash, unconventional and will contain no less than six humdingers. Some of which have as much chance of occurring as a […]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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