Katrina could raise gas prices?

[SF Bills Fan]

Link? Sounds interesting.

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/08/15/hybrid.tinkerers.ap/

[Hardy Pyle]

Higher oil prices is great news for us up here in Alberta, Canada. We have a $2.8 Billion dollar surplus, no provincial sales tax and soon no provincial income tax.

 

Alberta bumped up its projected budget surplus yesterday to at least $2.8-billion for the 2005/2006 fiscal year because of high oil and gas prices, but Finance Minister Shirley McClellan warned the rest of Canada against raiding the province's treasury.

[stuckincincy]

Just get a hybrid and say goodbye to oil company slavery altogether. You know they were not pleased when that article came out talking about how someone converted their hybrid to get 230 mpg.

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"Escape from Reality"

 

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...00305/1009/EDIT

[Hardy Pyle]

Let's connect the dots. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow visited Alberta in July. Vice-President Dick Cheney is going in September. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, headed by another Republican, Christopher Cox, may be on the verge of relaxing its oil reserve reporting requirements. If it does, the theoretical value of Alberta's oil sands will soar.

 

The Republicans are evidently falling in love with the oil sands, located right next door in friendly, OPEC-free Canada, complete with pipelines that cross the border. The question is whether the romance will be consummated by takeovers that would leave the oil sands industry largely in foreign hands.

 

A year or so ago, the Bush White House and its political agents seemed oblivious to the oil sands. But that was before Russia and Venezuela removed their "Welcome Yankee oil companies" signs from arrival lounges and before oil prices went to the then unthinkable $70 (U.S.) a barrel.

 

Now, Alberta and U.S. energy security are uttered in the same breath. Earlier this year, George W. Bush, with Paul Martin at his side, actually mentioned the oil sands -- he called them the "tar sands" -- at the Three Amigos summit in Texas. Since then, Alberta tourism brochures have cluttered the "in" boxes of senior Republicans. Spencer Abraham, the former U.S. energy secretary, spoke about oil at an investor conference in Banff in June. Mr. Cheney will be highest-ranking Republican to traipse north. In Ottawa, Mr. Martin can only dream of such attention.

 

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For Alberta, the most lavish attention may be yet to come. The SEC is under pressure to overhaul the reporting rules for oil reserves. The current rules are highly restrictive. In essence, the SEC says an oil sands reserve can only be booked as proven and commercially available if it comes with the infrastructure to extract the gooey oil, known as bitumen. If the SEC adopts a looser definition, the bitumen could be booked as a genuine reserve if it could be extracted at current prices using available technology.

 

If that were to happen, Alberta's oil sands reserves would go from 12 billion barrels to perhaps 175 billion barrels, making it, in effect, the next Saudi Arabia. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a high-profile consultancy in Massachusetts whose clients include companies with oil sands investments, has been lobbying the SEC to relax the reporting requirements. Don Coxe, chief strategist for Bank of Montreal's U.S. sister firm, Harris Investments, predicts the SEC will comply.

 

If it does, oil sands investors will be beaming like babies with a new rattle. That's because reserve life would potentially rise by several decades, and values would be adjusted accordingly. You have to wonder whether Total of France's purchase this summer of Deer Creek Energy, an Alberta oil sands operator, was a bet on SEC reserve reporting changes. If they come, Deer Creek's $1.35-billion (Canadian) purchase price might look like a bargain.

 

Deer Creek may be just the start of a takeover frenzy triggered by the global hunt for long-life oil reserves. Suncor, Western Oil Sands and Canadian Oil Sands Trust (COS) are potential targets. COS looks especially vulnerable because it has exceedingly big reserves and a low dividend yield (1.7 per cent, or less than Exxon Mobil's dividend yield), the result of the management decision to favour debt payments over high distributions to investors. Some investors think COS would be less vulnerable to takeover artists if it were to raise the payouts, which would boost the unit price and presumably help deter value-conscious buyers.

 

COS seems a sitting duck at its current yield. It has a stock market value of just under $11-billion. That seems hefty by Canadian standards. The top five global oil companies, among them Exxon Mobil and BP, have a collective stock market value of about $1.3-trillion (U.S.). To them, COS is a rounding error. But not even oil giants like to overpay for assets. If COS values its Canadian trust status, it would try to make itself more expensive.

 

Canada has a nasty habit of losing control over its big industries. Labatt and Molson are branch plant brewers operated by auto pilot from afar. Falconbridge, one of Canada's two largest mining and smelting companies, is owned 20 per cent by Xstrata and may soon come under the Swiss company's full control. Inco, once a giant among mining companies, now a second-string name, may be next. The oil industry has a few big Canadian players, including EnCana and Petro-Canada, but even more foreign ones.

 

The oil sands are one of the last great Canadian assets. Foreign companies seem poised to pounce on it, and nothing, it appears, would make the energy-crazed Republicans happier. Too bad Canadian investors don't realize the value of the goo in their backyard.

[stuckincincy]

Let's connect the dots. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow visited Alberta in July. Vice-President Dick Cheney is going in September. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, headed by another Republican, Christopher Cox, may be on the verge of relaxing its oil reserve reporting requirements. If it does, the theoretical value of Alberta's oil sands will soar.

 

The Republicans are evidently falling in love with the oil sands, located right next door in friendly, OPEC-free Canada, complete with pipelines that cross the border. The question is whether the romance will be consummated by takeovers that would leave the oil sands industry largely in foreign hands.

 

A year or so ago, the Bush White House and its political agents seemed oblivious to the oil sands. But that was before Russia and Venezuela removed their "Welcome Yankee oil companies" signs from arrival lounges and before oil prices went to the then unthinkable $70 (U.S.) a barrel.

 

Now, Alberta and U.S. energy security are uttered in the same breath. Earlier this year, George W. Bush, with Paul Martin at his side, actually mentioned the oil sands -- he called them the "tar sands" -- at the Three Amigos summit in Texas. Since then, Alberta tourism brochures have cluttered the "in" boxes of senior Republicans. Spencer Abraham, the former U.S. energy secretary, spoke about oil at an investor conference in Banff in June. Mr. Cheney will be highest-ranking Republican to traipse north. In Ottawa, Mr. Martin can only dream of such attention.

 

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For Alberta, the most lavish attention may be yet to come. The SEC is under pressure to overhaul the reporting rules for oil reserves. The current rules are highly restrictive. In essence, the SEC says an oil sands reserve can only be booked as proven and commercially available if it comes with the infrastructure to extract the gooey oil, known as bitumen. If the SEC adopts a looser definition, the bitumen could be booked as a genuine reserve if it could be extracted at current prices using available technology.

 

If that were to happen, Alberta's oil sands reserves would go from 12 billion barrels to perhaps 175 billion barrels, making it, in effect, the next Saudi Arabia. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a high-profile consultancy in Massachusetts whose clients include companies with oil sands investments, has been lobbying the SEC to relax the reporting requirements. Don Coxe, chief strategist for Bank of Montreal's U.S. sister firm, Harris Investments, predicts the SEC will comply.

 

If it does, oil sands investors will be beaming like babies with a new rattle. That's because reserve life would potentially rise by several decades, and values would be adjusted accordingly. You have to wonder whether Total of France's purchase this summer of Deer Creek Energy, an Alberta oil sands operator, was a bet on SEC reserve reporting changes. If they come, Deer Creek's $1.35-billion (Canadian) purchase price might look like a bargain.

 

Deer Creek may be just the start of a takeover frenzy triggered by the global hunt for long-life oil reserves. Suncor, Western Oil Sands and Canadian Oil Sands Trust (COS) are potential targets. COS looks especially vulnerable because it has exceedingly big reserves and a low dividend yield (1.7 per cent, or less than Exxon Mobil's dividend yield), the result of the management decision to favour debt payments over high distributions to investors. Some investors think COS would be less vulnerable to takeover artists if it were to raise the payouts, which would boost the unit price and presumably help deter value-conscious buyers.

 

COS seems a sitting duck at its current yield. It has a stock market value of just under $11-billion. That seems hefty by Canadian standards. The top five global oil companies, among them Exxon Mobil and BP, have a collective stock market value of about $1.3-trillion (U.S.). To them, COS is a rounding error. But not even oil giants like to overpay for assets. If COS values its Canadian trust status, it would try to make itself more expensive.

 

Canada has a nasty habit of losing control over its big industries. Labatt and Molson are branch plant brewers operated by auto pilot from afar. Falconbridge, one of Canada's two largest mining and smelting companies, is owned 20 per cent by Xstrata and may soon come under the Swiss company's full control. Inco, once a giant among mining companies, now a second-string name, may be next. The oil industry has a few big Canadian players, including EnCana and Petro-Canada, but even more foreign ones.

 

The oil sands are one of the last great Canadian assets. Foreign companies seem poised to pounce on it, and nothing, it appears, would make the energy-crazed Republicans happier. Too bad Canadian investors don't realize the value of the goo in their backyard.

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You still have your Quebec asbestos mines...