Tag: Alberta

Oil: Lower for Longer

We’ve done a little video to try and explain why analysts now expect the price of oil to stay much lower for much longer. It’s a different format than our previous videos, but we think it offers an opportunity to be more informative with a greater impact than some of our other videos.

We’ll be playing around with this idea for a while, experimenting with ways to make it interesting and quick, so please send us your thoughts and any topics you’d like us to cover.

In other news, the Canadian and global markets have been taking a beating over the last couple of weeks. Much of this is tied to an expected Federal Reserve rate hike for the end of December. The rate hike will be unbelievably small, but markets have been selling off in anticipation of it’s arrival.

The “normalising” of interest rates is a hot topic for many. Some American manufacturers worry that rising rates will inflate the USD further than it already has this year. In Emerging Markets the rising USD has meant a collapse in investment while funds flow back to American shores. Proponents of the rise have argued (persuasively I believe) that seven years after a major financial crisis it makes no sense to have interest rates at emergency levels. Long term cheap credit can’t be allowed to continue.

Canada is also getting badly beaten by the continuing falling price of oil and the end of the commodity super cycle. The slowing down of China has meant that there is simply less need for the huge amount of raw materials we have been selling. Prices on iron ore and copper have all been falling with the price of oil.

Canada is also saddled with other problems. Debt to income just hit a new high, while government debt is expected to grow substantially over the coming years while the economy looks to be doing worse.

We’ve been extremely busy in the second half of this year, which has kept us from writing as much as we have in the past. But we will try and be back later in the week with some more analysis on the markets and economy.

 

 

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

The Keystone Veto Was Meaningless

OILPossibly the most significant news in the last 24 hours was that Barack Obama had used his veto for the first time in five years to end the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline, delayed by 6 years carried with it the hopes of the Canada’s Conservative party and oil executives in Alberta. The pipeline had been opposed, studied and debated, being bounced back and forth through the US government. It had been primarily opposed by environmentalists who object to the environmental impact of Alberta Tar Sand oil and hoped that by killing the pipeline less of it would be extracted, alternative fuels would fill some of the gaps and the world would be a healthier place as a result. It’s subsequent (and rather final) cancelation is being heralded as a victory by many environmental activists.

As we’ve already written, this was not case. While the pipeline hadn’t been built it hadn’t slowed the development of the oil sands, or impeded its movement to refineries. Instead it had simply been supplanted by rail cars. Although more expensive, the roughly $9 a barrel premium was well worth it when oil was above $100 a barrel.

The current price of oil helps explain why there was little real political risk to anybody in the veto of the pipeline. While oil was expensive there was real incentive to get Canadian oil to US markets. It helps offset oil from more troubling parts of the world and makes the economy run a little smoother. But the rise of US shale, the falling price of oil, the use of train cars, an improving economy and rising dollar has wrecked the economics of building the pipeline. By the time the Obama had vetoed the bill there was very little at stake politically except to satisfy his environmental base of voters. The pipeline may yet be still resurrected, but six years on and a new economic reality will likely mean little will get done soon.

The death of the pipeline is troubling most of all for Canada. Shipping oil by train is more expensive, and considerably more dangerous. It also reflects the new found reality that the government cannot rely on oil prices to bolster the economy.  But most of all it reflects the continuing declining fortunes of Alberta and returns focus to Ontario, the once and future king of the broad economy.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Environmentalists Don’t Get Economics, and That’s Dangerous for Everyone

From the Toronto Star
From the Toronto Star

The Keystone Pipeline has enraged many people since it was first announced. Traditionally framed as a conflict between environmentalists and oil executives, the Keystone Pipeline is 1897 km of 36 inch pipe running from Hardisty, Alberta to Steel, Nebraska and for several years it has existed in limbo. Caught in the cross hairs of politicians, environmentalists, various national interests and corporations, it has been six years of waiting and becoming more unlikely that it may ever get built. A definitive win for the champions of the environment.

Or is it? In simple terms, NOT having a Keystone Pipeline does indeed impede the growth of Tar Sands industry, hampering the longer term ability to send extracted oil to be refined. But it doesn’t stop it. In fact, not building doesn’t stop the oil companies from shipping at all. The Keystone Pipeline has become a symbol of social angst about the environment, but in its place a number of much more terrible and dangerous options have been pursued. For instance, if you live int he city of Toronto you may have noticed that the CP Rail line that runs through the heart of many residential neighbourhoods is actually carrying hundreds of thousands of oil tankers destined for the same location as the proposed pipeline.

In response to constant deferral Canada’s rail lines have picked up the slack, moving as much oil around as the proposed pipe would have. This first came to my attention around a year ago at a lunch where a portfolio manager for an energy fund was explaining that even though Keystone had stalled, a new pipeline had indeed opened. The difference was that it was actually the railway system. Since then it has slowly been gaining wider acknowledgement that in place of a relatively safe oil pipeline we instead now have hundreds of trains travelling through neighbourhoods and schools and towns carrying vast amounts of highly toxic oil, among other dangerous things.

All this leads to the hard truth about difficult economic decisions. Sometimes the big bad business is still making the best decision. Opposing development, no matter how well intentioned, rarely changes the underlying needs that feed those projects. Worse still, not recognizing the economic drivers behind controversial projects like this only leads to the kind of unintended blowback that creates future messes. For environmentalists the likely outcome will have been to have slain a largely symbolic dragon, while in reality they have set the stage for future environmental disasters on a much greater scale than they had ever intended. They haven’t changed the direction of the energy market, or the need for oil. But they have undermined a good economic proposal in favour of a bad one.

Crude Oil YTD

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc