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Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

How a bout of even mild inflation could knock out the world’s ambitious plans for decarbonization – by Peter Tertzakian (Financial Post – April 28, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

The market battle between EVs and ICE vehicles may well be determined in the mines and oilfields of the world

The global economy is gaining momentum, even before the masks have come off the pandemic.

Unemployment rates are falling faster than expected in key countries, most notably the United States. Global GDP is being revised upwards to 6 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook report.

Put simply, this means that after contracting 3.3 per cent in 2020, the global economy will be larger in 2021 than in the pre-pandemic days of 2019. It seems we are back on a fast-moving train (still diesel-powered), and it’s all happening before governments shell out a couple of trillion dollars on the clean energy transition.

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Guest Commentary | ‘Keep it in the ground’ movement deserves more scrutiny – by Seth Whitehead (News Gazette – March 28, 2021)

https://www.news-gazette.com/

The Department of Energy and virtually every other reputable source forecasts
oil and natural gas remaining the country’s dominant source of energy for at
least the next 30 years.

Energy makes the high standard of living most Americans enjoy possible. Affordable, reliable energy is the lifeblood of our economy. And as University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology director Dr. Scott Tinker recently noted, “All forms of energy come from the earth.”

It is with those fundamental facts in mind that keep-it-in-the-ground groups should be viewed as anti-U.S. energy.

Though it’s obvious that traditional energy sources such as oil, natural gas and coal come from the ground, it is often overlooked that wind, solar and battery technologies would not be possible without massive mining projects.

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North America needs an energy policy – by Jack M. Mintz (Financial Post – March 18, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Rumours abound that U.S. President Joe Biden will use the Climate Summit on Earth Day (April 22nd) to push forward the Democrats’ left-wing climate-change agenda.

Expect some pretty tough global policy proposals, such as climate-related financial regulation. After the Trudeau-Biden virtual meeting a couple of weeks ago, Canada will be gung-ho, too.

Canada-U.S. co-operation to harmonize carbon policy may well help improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of climate-change policies in North America. But it is too narrow an agenda. Instead, Canada and the U.S. should seek a sensible North American energy package that pursues multiple objectives.

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Gold still looks good, but copper and oil look better – USBWM – by Neils Christensen (Kitco News – March 9, 2021)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – With equity markets back at record valuations and bond yields holding above 1.5%, investors appear to be pricing in perfection when it comes to a robust economic recovery. However, according to one market strategist, this could be good for gold.

In a recent telephone interview with Kitco News, Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, said that there is a lot of optimism in the marketplace due to expectations of a faster-than-expected economic recovery.

However, if there are any issues with the continued rollout of vaccines or hiccups with economic activity, that sentiment could quickly sour and drive gold prices higher.

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Canada’s biggest mistake was not building a cross-country oil pipeline — and the Line 5 standoff proves it – by Diane Francis (Financial Post – March 9, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

In the 19th century, Canada remained independent by building, at huge expense and great risk, the Canadian Pacific Railway along an all-Canadian route, rather than relying on shortcuts through the United States.

The same prudent routing strategy was applied to the construction of a natural gas pipeline from west to east in 1954, but not to oil pipelines. This vulnerability has finally come home to roost.

In November, Michigan ordered a key portion of the major pipeline carrying Canadian oil eastward — Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline — to be shut down by the end of May. The key portion consists of 7.2 kilometres of twin pipelines that cross under the Straits of Mackinac.

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Michigan, not COVID, may be the biggest threat to Canada’s economy – by Kelly McParland (National Post – March 5, 2021)

https://nationalpost.com/

The biggest immediate threat to Canada’s ability to emerge from the COVID crisis with a functioning economy lies not in who gets which type of vaccine, how quickly the provinces wean themselves off shutdowns or how many extra billions the Liberals are determined to spend in search of popularity.

It lies in a pipeline. Not the better-known Keystone or Trans Mountain lines that have been the focus of intense national and cross-border debate, but the more obscure Line 5, an Enbridge conduit that carries petroleum and other products from Western Canada to the eastern provinces by way of Michigan.

It usually gets little attention because it’s been in operation with minimal drama since the 1950s. Its future has suddenly become questionable because Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a close ally of President Joe Biden, wants it shut down.

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OPINION: Message from the Norway wealth fund to oil sands companies: Clean up your act or suffer – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – February 27, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Norway’s US$1.3-trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, continues to lose interest in grubby resource companies. Last month, we learned it blacklisted 15 businesses in 2020.

Four were Canadian, each an oil sands player: Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil and Suncor.

“We divest from companies where we no longer want to be a shareholder for ethical or sustainability reasons,” the fund said. “By not investing in these companies, we reduce our exposure to unacceptable risks.”

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Why it’s time to resurrect Energy East – by Diane Francis (Financial Post – February 25, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Would help us deal with loss of Keystone XL and provide added benefit of displacing imported oil from Saudi Arabia

Here’s a brilliant idea to create jobs and economic development that Canada’s hapless Liberal government has never thought of: resurrect Energy East, the proposed pipeline linking Western Canadian oil to Quebec and Atlantic Canada that was killed without justification due to the prime minister’s unflagging capitulation to environmental crazies and Quebec nationalists.

That is just one of several energy policy initiatives put forth in a Feb. 25 report published by the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI).

“The revoking of Keystone XL’s permit by U.S. President Joe Biden (on) his first day in office highlights the risk for Canada of depending on a single country for its petroleum product exports,” wrote Miguel Ouellette in his report.

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A year after Wet’suwet’en crisis, First Nations’ questions about self-governance have only grown louder in a pandemic – by Wendy Stueck and Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – February 23, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Three small cabins stand next to Lamprey Creek in northern British Columbia, built by Wet’suwet’en Nation members and their supporters over the past year.

The structures occupy the site of a former Indigenous village site where Wet’suwet’en people lived and fished for centuries before the area became a recreation site for campers and anglers, according to Molly Wickham, a member of the nation whose hereditary name is Sleydo’.

But the site is also close to spots where, one year ago, RCMP officers arrested protesters challenging the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

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Big freeze in Texas is becoming a global oil market crisis – by Alex Longley (Bloomberg News – February 18, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

What began as a power issue for a handful of U.S. states is rippling into a shock for the world’s oil market.

More than 4 million barrels a day of output — almost 40 per cent of the nation’s crude production — is now offline, according to traders and executives. One of the world’s biggest oil refining centers has seen output drastically cut back. The waterways that help U.S. oil flow to the rest of the world have been disrupted for much of the week.

“The market is underestimating the amount of oil production lost in Texas due to the bad weather,” said Ben Luckock, co-head of oil trading at commodity giant Trafigura Group.

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In Texas’s black-swan blackout, everything went wrong at once – by Rachel Adams-Heard, Naureen S. Malik and Brian Eckhouse (Bloomberg News – February 16, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

The finger-pointing began immediately: It was the frozen wind turbines that foolishly replaced traditional sources. No, fossil fuels were at fault. No, Texas’s deregulated power market, unique in the country, had allowed companies to skimp on maintenance and upgrades.

As the hours ticked by and millions more were plunged into frozen darkness, a more sober reality emerged. The greatest forced blackout in U.S. history, as this event has almost certainly become, was the result of a systemic and multifaceted failure.

There are no promises of when power will be restored and little likelihood that the episode won’t be repeated in a corner of the country hard hit by climate change.

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This Blizzard Exposes The Perils Of Attempting To ‘Electrify Everything’ – by Robert Bryce (Forbes Magazine – February 15, 2021)

https://www.forbes.com/

The massive blast of Siberia-like cold that is wreaking havoc across North America is proving that if we humans want to keep surviving frigid winters, we are going to have to keep burning natural gas — and lots of it — for decades to come.

That cold reality contradicts the “electrify everything” scenario that’s being promoted by climate change activists, politicians, and academics.

They claim that to avert the possibility of catastrophic climate change, we must stop burning hydrocarbons and convert all of our transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial systems so that they are powered solely on electricity, with most of that juice coming, of course, from forests of wind turbines and oceans of solar panels.

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‘It’s freakishly cold’: Deep freeze slams North American energy sector – by Geoffry Morgan (Financial Post – February 16, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

CALGARY – A deep freeze is roiling electricity markets in more than a dozen U.S. states, leading to record-setting prices for electricity and natural gas, knocking oil production off line and shutting down some of North America’s largest refineries.

“It’s freakishly cold,” said Eric Fell, a senior natural gas analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Houston, where record cold temperatures and snow have blanketed the city, caused rolling power outages, shut down refineries and sent both natural gas and electricity prices soaring.

The polar vortex has led to freezing temperatures in every county in Texas, the largest energy-producing state in the U.S., and caused massive disruptions across the North American energy complex, triggering power outages as far south as Mexico.

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DirtyCo to CleanCo: How environmental pressure is shaking up the mining industry – and will soon reshape it – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – February 6, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In the global push to avert catastrophic climate change, investors’ new mantra is ESG – environmental, social and governance – and resource companies are looking for ways to sell, merge and change their businesses to follow the money

The mining industry is embarking on a black-to-green revolution that will almost certainly trigger an unprecedented wave of sales and mergers, reshaping the world’s top companies.

Industry bosses told The Globe and Mail that intense pressure from environmental, social and governance (ESG) investors to meet climate targets will prompt imaginative efforts by big mining companies to dump, or greatly reduce, their exposure to their dirtiest, most carbon-intensive assets – mostly coal, oil and iron ore – commodities that are taking on pariah status after having powered two centuries of industrialization.

“We are about to see a game-changing scenario,” said Mark Cutifani, the CEO of Anglo American , one of the world’s biggest diversified mining companies. “At some point soon, there will be a restructuring of businesses and assets, starting with thermal coal.”

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Canada must retaliate over Biden’s ill-considered Keystone decision – by Conrad Black (National Post – February 6, 2021)

https://nationalpost.com/

Canada absolutely has to retaliate for the outrageous and cavalier cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. The millions of Canadians who celebrated former U.S. president Donald Trump’s departure from the White House may start to wonder if the new era is quite as paradisiacal as they had expected.

President Joe Biden promised to ”rebuild our alliances,” yet with no notice given to America’s closest, oldest and least abrasive ally, with whose leader he is personally friendly, he revoked the existing arrangements and withdrew the permit to construct the pipeline, throwing 11,000 of his countrymen, and possibly as many as 40,000 Canadians, out of work.

Other executive orders that Biden issued in his first week in office reaffirmed his desire for a $15 minimum wage and additional immigration of unskilled foreigners at a time when the United States is still attempting to reduce COVID-related unemployment.

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