Calgary & Alberta Economy

[darwink]

Pipelines will be built, all will be fine. People sometimes forget that regulators can't be cheerleaders, or courts will be way more likely to throw out even the most well prepared project — which will be a problem for flood mitigation in the province just like for these other projects.

The industry will never be the same though since the USA can produce practically an unlimited amount of supply in response to $80 a barrel with less than a 1 year lead time that will cause another price crash (that is if money is too easy and lenders have short enough memories).

 

[Marcanadian]

"Operater" will be taking a one week vacation for violating the posting guidelines: http://skyrisecities.com/forum/threads/skyrisecities-rules-of-conduct.24066/

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Energy East was so long, and the potential toll so high, that it only made sense if all other expansion routes were blocked. From what I heard it was barely cost competitive with rail to the Gulf Coast.

Oh really eh? I had no idea. Interesting to know that.

 

[darwink]

Oh really eh? I had no idea. Interesting to know that.

Energy east is 46% longer (higher toll), and then it needs to go on tankers (another cost). You get to the Gulf Coast, the the journey is done - it displaces Venezuelan and Mexican heavy back onto tankers to somewhere else (or has the effect of making prices act that way, oil being fungible and all).

 

[Surrealplaces]

Interesting info about Energy East. I am still wondering about the feasibility of Keystone. I'd like to see it go through obviously, but no matter how you look at it, it seems like something good for Canada, but not necessarily a huge benefit to the U.S. I heard something recently saying the number of permanent jobs in the U.S. from Keystone is far less than what was predicted.

 

[darwink]

Well it depends. The main benefit is that it reduces the need to retool heavy oil refineries to use lighter oil as Venezuelan and Mexican crude supply drop. That is good, but it actually reduces economic growth, in the same way not having a natural disaster reduces economic growth.

Jobs aren't a great metric to measure whether things are worth doing.

 

[Cowtown]

Jobs are one of the metrics but I agree, not the only one and not only the best. Even politics plays into it, from an American point of view, they get to have someone else pay the cost in building infrastructure that brings another source of oil to the country. If they ever have an issue with Venezuela or Mexico politically that affects supply, this is another alternative. There are jobs of course, even if it's not a lot of jobs, it's still jobs, and of not to be forgotten, good ol' royalties. I'm sure there will be some royalties that come into play. Anyhow, IMO the most important factor in this, is that it doesn't cost the US anything, and adds at least some economic impact and more options.

 

[Oddball]

Well it depends. The main benefit is that it reduces the need to retool heavy oil refineries to use lighter oil as Venezuelan and Mexican crude supply drop. That is good, but it actually reduces economic growth, in the same way not having a natural disaster reduces economic growth.

Jobs aren't a great metric to measure whether things are worth doing.

Not to mention that in the case of a disaster/war/etc., there is generally boost to growth but a tremendous loss of wealth/value

 

[Surrealplaces]

It sounds like it's more of a benefit to the U.S. than I thought. Either way, it'll be nice to see it get built.

 

[darwink]

That it is good for them doesn't mean is it worse for us either.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Win Win!

 

[Oddball]

The LFS is out for November. The unemployment rate is sitting below 8% for the first time since January of 2016. It currently sits at 7.8%, but once again, the underlying numbers are not so go. There was declining employment again for the fourth consecutive month. There are now 10,000 fewer people working today than at the peak back in July. So the declining unemployment rate doesn't seem to have anything to do with job growth, but rather people leaving the labour force.

The participation rate dropped to 73.0%. It's the 5th consecutive month of labour force participation declines for Calgary. The lowest the participation rate has been since the beginning of 2014 is 72.1% back in December of 2015. A drop of 0.7% in one month ties the 0.7% drops from October to November 2017 and November to December 2015.

Not end of the world news year, but definitely not good news. Especially not if we're hoping office absorption. Things are at best stagnant right now.

 

[darwink]

I think the recession feels worse this time (though the impact is mostly on hourly workers) due to this, not employment rates:

 

[Oddball]

Yuck. These are Alberta figures I imagine? I wonder it the high overtime bump for hourly workers in between recessions was an indication of an overheated economy.

 

[darwink]

Yuck. These are Alberta figures I imagine? I wonder it the high overtime bump for hourly workers in between recessions was an indication of an overheated economy.

Yup, and likely some of it was better data gathering.