Tick, tick, tick. The countdown to another rail accident is already on. A 90-car derailment last week in Alabama is only the latest in a series of train wrecks unfolding across North America. The next one, as promised by a dangerous combination of lax regulations and booming traffic, is just around the bend. Fracking may [...]
Is the Middle East about to deliver another oil shock to the global economy? The U.S. military has targets picked out in Syria and President Obama is trying to convince Congress that America needs to intervene. If the U.S. does go ahead with tactical strikes against the Assad regime, oil markets will be caught in [...]
Consider the tale of Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources, two of the largest oil sands producers in Alberta. Outwardly, they may appear quite similar. Each produces hundreds of thousands of barrels a day from the oil sands. And most of that oil eventually ends up in the same place—gas tanks across the continent. The path [...]
Four years ago, when I was still chief economist at CIBC World Markets, I forecast that global economic growth was on pace to send oil prices to $200 a barrel by 2012. In short, the argument was based on a supply-driven analysis that weighed the sources of future oil supply against the prices that would [...]
Why is the Arab world convulsing with social and political unrest when triple digit oil prices should be bringing enormous wealth to the region? The answer may be that the link between energy inputs and food prices suddenly makes soaring oil prices a double-edged sword in the world’s largest food importing region. Egyptians are about [...]
There are many ways that oil shocks affect the economy, and none of them is good. As the prices of gasoline, diesel and home heating fuel rise, consumers’ energy bills eat up a growing share of their after-tax income, forcing cutbacks in more discretionary areas of spending. The next thing you know, people are going [...]