Crude Observations

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 […]

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 […]