YYC economic down turn.

[Beefitarian]

I bin laid off.

I just got current in January again.

Oil prices.

[arctic_slim]

Brutal. I'm sorry to hear that. Which outfit were you with? I thought everyone was done laying off people. Time to go apply at Encore or Jazz like everyone else? Good luck, hope you find a replacement job.

[Rockie]

Price of oil is showing signs of life, keep your chin up.

[Beefitarian]

Thanks gentlemen. I was working for Enterprise Car rental. Like a customer said a few months ago after asking "How's business?" "I'd like to say I don't work in the Oil industry but we all do kind of."

I am barely a PPL since I fly once a year lately.

[CFM Symphony]

Price of oil is showing signs of life

Emerging nations are in a massive slowdown - possibly the biggest in recent history. The U.S. Federal Reserve is again talking about cutting the interest rate, just a few months after it raised it. The hard truth is there is not only an oversupply of oil, but also very weak demand. It's a bleak future for commodities over the next few years.

[Old fella]

Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup and oil $110.00/bl. How's that for a rosy prediction.

[longjon]

Ever notice how the so called bank or broker experts make predictions about commodity prices, oil, gold, copper etc saying their prices are either bottomed out or topped out and 6 months later the opposite happens. I'd think these people eat a lot of Crow but you never hear them admit it.

[CID]

Oil is done. Canada has too much invested in what is the most expensive oil in the world. It's time to develop alternative energy.

[Axial Flow]

Or if you can believe what you read....(from a source other than Avcanada of course)

National Post Article

[CFM Symphony]

Paradoxically of course, it also happens that when oil is cheap the incentive to push alternative energy is at its lowest. I don't think oil is done, nor close to it, but it will be a while before the market recovers. Just my view.

[7ECA]

Clean oil? WTF...

[crazyaviator]

Oil pricing is a geopolitical construct, not a supply and demand issue. Supply and demand comes AFTER Certain moves to control/punish other governments are enacted. Example: Did the demand drop while the supply stayed the same ? Did the supply drop when demand dropped? Did the supply increase when the demand dropped? If # 3 scenario is true, then the supply / demand curve is being engineered for other purposes!

[Longtimer]

I wonder if our new PM understands his new friends? While he was being wined and dined in Washinton, the US, yesterday, turned down an application for a Natural Gas pipeline through the US that would have allowed us to export our Natural Gas offshore and then almost on the same day there was an announcement that the US was looking to sell their excess natural gas to Eastern Canada. The two were not of course connected.

At the same time folks in Quebec as against any dirty oil etc coming from Alberta but are happy as hell to purchase same from real dirty regimes. It seems to me that the US funded protesters are only interested in keeping our energy in the ground until they need it. A little like how the orchestrated the cancellation of the Avro Arrow which would have threatened the US aviation industry. Our current politicians seem to have forgotten the law of the street, if you play with the big guy, the big guy sets the rules of the game.

[Cessna driver]

I bin laid off.

I just got current in January again.

Oil prices.

F****** NDP

[Prodriver]

I bin laid off.

I just got current in January again.

Oil prices.

F****** NDP

We have worked thru low oil before, never really been a big problem, the difference is the NDP in AB scared all the capital away and we are doomed for 3.5 yrs until the next election or she re-assures the Capital markets and fund managers. That team of miss fits is affecting all the Prairie Provinces. Sad really..

[Heliian]

F****** NDP

Blaming a provincial government for worldwide economic downturn is ridiculous and childish.

Face it, Alberta has all of it's eggs in one basket. Maybe put some of the blame on giant oil companies that can't save for a rainy day.

Regardless of what y'all think, it will eventually come around. When and how strong is anybody's guess.

[iflyforpie]

The oil companies blaming their lack of investment on the NDP is simply an end-run to try and get a Conservative or Wildrose government back in. For the first time in decades, there is a party in power that isn't in the pocket of the large oil companies.

See... back in 2007 or somewhere around there, Ed Stelmach recognized that economic times were good, but Alberta's debt was mounting--mostly from playing catch up from the Klein years. So he wanted to raise royalties to 50%. Big oil threatened to pull their political donations and fund the Wildrose instead... so royalties went back down, and Alberta's debt mounted.

A year ago today, when people figured there was a greater chance of an icicle in hell than the NDP running Alberta, when oil was around half again what it is today, when Harper was still firmly in power.... oil companies were laying off people left, right, and centre and pulling out nearly all investment... ...there were no new pipelines... just the servicing of Alberta's debt was costing $750 million a year... and Prentice was in the process of ending Alberta's flat tax.

Albertans knew all of this, and voted accordingly.

Raising taxes during an economic downturn is one of the worst things you can do... but what could the NDP do otherwise? When the NDP is cutting school and hospital funding, you know it's bad. Had Stelmach and the people of Alberta stuck to their guns in the late 2000s... Alberta would have had a tidy pile of money to spend on stimulus, retraining, investment in other industries, and tax and royalty relief.

But I have a feeling that history is going to repeat itself, once again. A generation of Albertans are going to blame Notley and Trudeau for their troubles... and vote in another dynasty that supports corporate socialism and that will sell their future off... one barrel at a time.

Mister, we could use a man like Peter Lougheed again...

[kilpicki]

Pie, you're obviously an economics professor at some university who cruises these pilot forums for something to do. From the sounds of it you're quoting from one of your published papers. where can we read the whole paper?

[iflyforpie]

Nope... I'm just a humble AME who has a penchant for baffling people with bullshit.. or so I'm told.

I live in a small BC town that is heavily dependent on a healthy Alberta economy, so I watch AB economics and politics very closely.

All of the things like Stelmach's royalty reviews, the price of WTI a year ago, AB's historical debt levels are all available online through many sources.

[Changes in Latitudes]

Sorry, to hear that Beefs. Are you hanging in there alright?

[Beefitarian]

Yeah, we're back to the wife's income, it will be ok. I can probably adjust. It was a good run for a part time gig. I'm heavy enough to break out the fat guy account here. I have more to be thankful for than most.

[anofly]

Cmon fellas, oil prices are not set in Ottawa, or Calgary.... There are folks overseas that can pump like the devil for all in cost of around $15 per... Some of the Canadian stuff is 60 per. Shale gas is a global game changer. For now. Overseas folks could bury us in oil , and probably will ,till they take a lot of our expensive stuff out of the game, then they will inch the price up...
Don't forget where we in Canada really fit in.About 3 % or less of the global economy.

[privateer]

The world is changing. The sooner Alberta (Canada) gets off the oil train the better it will be for our country.

https://vimeo.com/152195669

[hangar3]

Sorry you lost your job man, that sucks!

The world is changing. The sooner Alberta (Canada) gets off the oil train the better it will be for our country.

https://vimeo.com/152195669

While I do agree that times are changing, and I believe that electricity and other types of energy will lead the way, I don't think the oil industry is gonna go quite as much as Tesla is pretending - too many things use oil, such as the roads Teslas ride on... Also, while I respect their engineering and development, I find it hard to believe a company that sells cars that are unaffordable for anyone but the 1% to pretend like they're changing the world. It is just a PR campaign. Ferdinand Porsche had electric motors in the early 1900's, and plenty of companies have done electric cars before but it was too expensive like it still is, nothing's that new.

Cmon fellas, oil prices are not set in Ottawa, or Calgary.... There are folks overseas that can pump like the devil for all in cost of around $15 per... Some of the Canadian stuff is 60 per. Shale gas is a global game changer. For now. Overseas folks could bury us in oil , and probably will ,till they take a lot of our expensive stuff out of the game, then they will inch the price up...
Don't forget where we in Canada really fit in.About 3 % or less of the global economy.

I totally, agree that the oil prices are not set in Ottawa or Calgary, and that's something that gets missed often, and leads to poorly informed decision in our country. I thought I'd pitch in to help relieve some misconception about the cost of getting Canadian oil out of the ground.
$15/bbl is possible, and VERY frequent, but the problem is that for a lot of Canadian wells, that might the break-even point right now, because the price that a company gets for its oil in Canada is not what you see posted online unless it's the same grade of oil!. Alberta bitumen, is generally heavier oil, so you don't get the $40/bbl you see right now for "clean" WTI oil, but maybe a downgraded $15/bbl. If you can't refine your oil to the sale grade, you get less money. That's why we want a pipeline to the East/South to the refineries.
If we were getting $40/bbl US right now I guarantee you it wouldn't have been this bad. And nobody's in the business to just break even.

In the end, it's business, and you milk an opportunity as much as you can when you can, and cut back when it doesn't work. For various reasons I won't dive into at this point, including the point anofly makes, I don't think it's gonna get any better for a while, and I would say you should take your time, and really consider what you want to do and enjoy doing (but then again, who the hell am I?). I don't think it's a dream per se for people to work in the oil industry (myself included), and at least this downturn is giving a lot of people a chance to do what they really want, which they couldn't or wouldn't do before - and I really think we would benefit from this diversification. The problem is the downturns never lasts long enough for people to diversify, and then we're back to normal.

[privateer]

You have to admit though it is an aspiring video. I think once other car makers start pumping out affordable electric vehicles the trend will be a landslide from there.