On the same day the Obama Administration put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline, two engineering contracts totaling $12.2 billion were awarded to two U.S. companies for work in the Alberta oil sands. One included a $750 million contract to a Chicago-based company for work on Exxon’s huge Kearl Oil Sands project, one of [...]
The International Energy Agency may not have a solution but no one can accuse them of no longer understanding the gravity of the problem. In their June report, the IEA warned that unless OPEC could increase production by at least 1.5 million barrels a day, world oil demand is going to surpass available supply during [...]
What’s more important to world oil demand- gasoline prices in the U.S. that are nearly $4 a gallon, or power rationing in China? To Americans, of course, it’s the former. But to world oil markets, the latter may be a far more significant indication of where oil prices will be heading this summer. At today’s [...]
Why has Global Sticks, a manufacturer of wooden ice cream sticks, moving from Dalian, China to Thunder Bay, Ontario? It’s the kind of low margin manufacturing that is never supposed to come back after it leaves North America for cheaper labour abroad. But wage costs are no longer everything they were cranked up to be. [...]
Will Export Restrictions on Energy Echo Those on Food? Higher prices are supposed to encourage more world supply. It’s standard textbook economics. But what happens when instead of export-oriented global firms, it’s governments that control supply. They may not respond to price signals the same way as profit maximizing companies. n fact, they may respond in [...]
With OPEC tapped out, where will China find the oil to power future economic growth? The obvious answer is it will take a big chunk out of the 19 million barrels the U.S. economy burns every day. And China doesn’t have to build a blue water navy or engage in an arms race to take [...]