Reflecting on Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show

Op-Ed: Deidra Garyk: Reflecting on the 2024 Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show: A Celebration of Community and Innovation

In Pipeline Online’s quest to ensure we all know EXACTLY what the feds are telling us on energy, I have a series of press releases from this week, which I’ll post over the weekend.

Government of Canada Announces New Intake for Clean Electricity Program With $500 Million in Additional Funding

 

The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

State of the Republic;

As of this September, federal, state and local governments in this country employed a record total of 23,421,000 individuals, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In other words, government payrolls were populated by more people than lived in the state of Florida or in any of 47 other states. Only California and Texas had populations that exceeded the number of people who work for government in this country.

America’s Most Convenient Bank®

The Bureau;

In a historic crackdown on criminality that reached into the upper echelons of Canadian banking operations in the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice has unveiled a case against TD Bank spanning nearly a decade. Officials revealed that the bank allowed approximately $18.3 trillion to flow through its systems unchecked between January 2014 and October 2023, facilitating money laundering activities for Colombian drug traffickers and three major money laundering networks, including a Chinese crime group operating in New Jersey.

These networks collectively laundered over $670 million through TD Bank’s accounts.

During this period, TD Bank failed to monitor 92 percent of its transaction volume, resulting in over 14.6 billion unmonitored transactions, encompassing a range of high-risk activities. The case has delivered a serious blow to TD Bank’s U.S. expansion efforts and raises critical questions about regulatory oversight in Canada, where some experts argue that gaps in enforcement allowed such lapses to persist.

“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one,” U.S. Attorney-General Merrick Garland said at a news conference in Washington.

Some experts contend that Canada’s regulatory environment has become a haven for international crime.

On Friday, Marc Cohodes, a U.S. investor known for exposing financial misconduct, told The Bureau: “The amount of financial crime going on in Canada right now is far greater than the mind can comprehend. It involves housing, mortgages, and illicit funds flowing in from European, Chinese, and South American networks into Canada’s financial systems. The way Canada is welcoming third-world criminals and their funds risks turning it into a third-world enterprise.”

Cohodes said he believes Canada’s government has a “dire and urgent need” to address the reputational harm to the nation stemming from the TD case, and other issues, like casino and real estate money laundering in British Columbia, that Cohodes began publicly commenting on in 2015.

Collective Farming

Why are the Tories split on this issue? Do some of them actually think that the supply mismanaged dairy and poultry sectors should be allowed to hold the rest of the economy hostage?

This week, farming groups and former trade negotiators took turns trying to convince the upper chamber to either support or reject the Bloc’s private member’s bill to protect supply management from future trade negotiations.

The government voted in favour of the legislation last year, as did most Liberal MPs, the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens. The Conservatives were split on the vote.

 

Everything Is Fine

Bloomberg Energy Daily;

On Monday, Shell said the margin earned for processing crude sank by 29% in the period. Its chemicals division — also a bellwether for the strength of the wider economy — expects to report a “marginal loss.” Strong gas production was one of a few bright spots.

BP followed on Friday with another warning flag: an increase in its net debt. This core metric has fallen in recent years — from $40 billion in 2020 to about $23 billion at the end of the second quarter — as high energy prices boosted profits.

Now, feeble refining income has halted the downward trend, while a change in the timing of asset-sale payments was also a factor.

These aren’t just issues for the European majors. On Oct. 3, Exxon Mobil Corp. said lower crude prices and poor refining margins would reduce earnings by $1.6 billion quarter-on-quarter.

Profits from processing are closely tied to demand for road fuels, so the decline indicates broad weakness in the global economy — notably in China, but also in the US and Europe.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Because it’s a scam and voters are catching on.

The future of the clean energy transition is cloudy. It’s well-known that there are disagreements—wide disagreements—between Republicans and Democrats about our energy future. But less well-known is the bedrock of public opinion on America’s energy supply, the importance of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and the general salience of the climate change issue.

Findings from a new YouGov survey indicate that most voters’ views differ quite a bit from those of rapid energy transition advocates. These views constitute an ineluctable reality that any transition, on any timetable, will have to deal with. At the same time there is political opportunity here to better align policy priorities with voter preferences.

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