Calfrac : Contributing to Russias atrocities in Ukraine

[JoseCuervo]

I think this deserves its own thread due to the importance to recognize that a major Calgary company has decided to put profit over people. Calfrac has decided to continue its operations in Russia, one of a handful of major companies deciding to stay and operate in the country after most have pulled out.

https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over...ia-some-remain

[Snuffleupagus]

Shame the hell out of them a SM would be a good start.

The Koch's still operating there as well, will make Trump happy

[Weitz]

Pulling out will bankrupt them. So they are in a rock and a hard place.

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Pulling out will bankrupt them. So they are in a rock and a hard place.

I guess thats what happens when you do business with dictators who are murdering thousands of civilians. I have no sympathy.

[Looch City]

That website says 11% of their revenue from Russia…that doesn’t seem like instant bankruptcy if they pull out?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Looch City

That website says 11% of their revenue from Russia…that doesn’t seem like instant bankruptcy if they pull out?

That’s what some of the people I know there seem to think. They still should get the hell out of there though.

[Reaper]

I wonder how many paper Ukrainian flags could fit in the lawn of Cal-Frac's technology and training centre off Barlow Trail? Would the flag placer(s) call Global News or The Calgary Herald who are very close to said technology and training centre for coverage after they're done or would that be a quick text right before they start? Just thinking out loud here...

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Reaper

I wonder how many paper Ukrainian flags could fit in the lawn of Cal-Frac's technology and training centre off Barlow Trail? Would the flag placer(s) call Global News or The Calgary Herald who are very close to said technology and training centre for coverage after they're done or would that be a quick text right before they start? Just thinking out loud here...

They left that location several years ago.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

I guess thats what happens when you do business with dictators who are murdering thousands of civilians. I have no sympathy.

Dozens of Canadian energy companies do business with Saudi Arabia. Yemenis have gotta pick up their social media game.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...moved-ngo-says

[bizaro86]

So, I have a practical question about businesses pulling out of Russia.

I get not investing new money in Russia. But taking Calfrac as an example - it isn't like Russia is going to let them take their pumps and equipment out of the country. So it seems like from a practical point of view their choices are:

1) stop operating in Russia, forfeit the equipment, and the Russian state operates it instead keeping the money

2) continue operating the equipment and Calfrac keeps the money.

Either way the equipment is operating with the existing Russian crews. I'm not sure I'm in favour of Canadian companies donating their assets to Putin's regime.

If there was a way to get the assets out OR if the Russians couldn't operate the equipment then my opinion changes, but I doubt either of those are true.

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

So, I have a practical question about businesses pulling out of Russia.

I get not investing new money in Russia. But taking Calfrac as an example - it isn't like Russia is going to let them take their pumps and equipment out of the country. So it seems like from a practical point of view their choices are:

1) stop operating in Russia, forfeit the equipment, and the Russian state operates it instead keeping the money

2) continue operating the equipment and Calfrac keeps the money.

Either way the equipment is operating with the existing Russian crews. I'm not sure I'm in favour of Canadian companies donating their assets to Putin's regime.

If there was a way to get the assets out OR if the Russians couldn't operate the equipment then my opinion changes, but I doubt either of those are true.

Plenty of other businesses have made the decision to shut down operations completely. You don't think they have tangible assets in country? Look at all of the E&P companies who made the decision to completely withdraw.

Here's a full list of companies and their 'Russia' plan.

https://yale.app.box.com/s/11lqy1d3y...96k9sb6w5m4qea

To answer your question, Cal Frac could mothball their equipment and move it off site.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Leondros

To answer your question, Cal Frac could mothball their equipment and move it off site.

Can they actually? Do they have somewhere to put it? Would it not be seized and nationalized? I really do not know the answers to these questions.

It just seems like a well services company is probably not "contributing to atrocities" by continuing to fulfil its contract to provide those services. I'm not even sure whether it would be better or worse from the perspective of the Russian government if they stopped. I suspect the answer is mostly "wouldn't make any noticeable difference either way".

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Leondros

Plenty of other businesses have made the decision to shut down operations completely. You don't think they have tangible assets in country? Look at all of the E&P companies who made the decision to completely withdraw.

Here's a full list of companies and their 'Russia' plan.

https://yale.app.box.com/s/11lqy1d3y...96k9sb6w5m4qea

To answer your question, Cal Frac could mothball their equipment and move it off site.

Sure, my comment wasn't related to only Calfrac specifically, that is just the company in the title so that's the example I used. In many ways Calfrac would be easier to withdraw than an E&P - they at least have a chance of moving stuff.

Someone like BP (owns rosneft shares) or an E&P with direct well ownership obviously can't repatriate, the wells are where they are.

To be clear, I don't support Russia here at all. I spent a summer in rural Ukraine during high school working with kids. It literally haunts my dreams that those little kids are now 20 year olds fighting and dying in an unjust invasion of their home. Its awful.

I'm just not sure that the best way to support those kids is to (effectively) donate a bunch of assets to the Russian state. I'm not saying I know what to do here, but just that the situation has more nuance than it might seem.

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Sure, my comment wasn't related to only Calfrac specifically, that is just the company in the title so that's the example I used. In many ways Calfrac would be easier to withdraw than an E&P - they at least have a chance of moving stuff.

Someone like BP (owns rosneft shares) or an E&P with direct well ownership obviously can't repatriate, the wells are where they are.

To be clear, I don't support Russia here at all. I spent a summer in rural Ukraine during high school working with kids. It literally haunts my dreams that those little kids are now 20 year olds fighting and dying in an unjust invasion of their home. Its awful.

I'm just not sure that the best way to support those kids is to (effectively) donate a bunch of assets to the Russian state. I'm not saying I know what to do here, but just that the situation has more nuance than it might seem.

The further this goes on the more likely it is that Russia ends up nationalizing and expropriating all foreign corporation assets anyway.

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Dozens of Canadian energy companies do business with Saudi Arabia. Yemenis have gotta pick up their social media game.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...moved-ngo-says

Saudi Arabia can also #### off. Evil regime.

[PeteMoss]

Pretty well every country has some evil going on somewhere. Russia is the one right now threatening to nuke people every 2nd day - so you swallow hard and deal with the lesser evils.

And we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels so we don't have to pal around with either of them.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Pretty well every country has some evil going on somewhere. Russia is the one right now threatening to nuke people every 2nd day - so you swallow hard and deal with the lesser evils.

And we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels so we don't have to pal around with either of them.

Divesting from Russian resources is a good thing for many reasons, but let's not pretend that shifting away from fossil fuels would be some sort of humanitarian win. Look at where a large portion of the metals that are needed for the renewable industry come from and you'll see it's a real who's-who of human/environmental rights champions to pal around with. Cobalt (70%) from Congo, Rare-earths (80%+) from China, Palladium (30%) from uh, Russia. Unless we here in the West are prepared to increase our share of the dirty work (ie. the actual mining and processing), under the same high standards and regulations as the fossil fuel industry functions under now, I don't see how renewables lead to an improvement on the humanitarian front.

Also, we also have to be weary of shifting our energy security out of our hands. China alone completely dominates the solar market (97% share of silicon wafers production, 79% share of PV cells and 67% share of polysilicon, as of 2019 ). If there was a large scale shift of energy to solar, we effectively put our energy security in their hands. The last month of war should be a giant warning flag about what happens when any region puts its energy security in the hands of another. You are effectively crippled to do anything of consequence.

I'm all for divesting from Russia, but let's make sure that we're not just setting the foundation for the next conflict.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Dozens of Canadian energy companies do business with Saudi Arabia. Yemenis have gotta pick up their social media game.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...moved-ngo-says

You keep bringing this up framing Saudi as the sole bad guys in this, but it is detached from reality and demonstrates a huge ignorance of facts / inability to consider with what is actually going on.

The Houthis are a terrorist organization as determined by the UN that launches daily missile / rocket attacks into Saudi Arabia. Just last weekend they blew up a Saudi Aramco site.

Name one country that would stand idle and let a neighbouring territory fire rockets and missiles into its nation without response. The fact that the Houthis hide amongst the Yemeni local population (who of course in large respects support them...) and decide to put their missile / attack launchers in / around civilian buildings, etc. seems to be casually ignored in Saudi's sovereign right to defend itself. So yes your damn right they are going to bomb these people who cowardly decide to go hide amongst local civilian populations. No different than what Canada / States had to do in Afghanistan against the Taliban during those campaigns either.

What would Canada / US do if the people on a nearby side of the border of either country were just launching stray missiles into Vancouver / LA all willy nilly and killing Canadians or Americans and arbitrarily destroying infrastructure? I asked you this in the other thread and didn't get an answer.

You can't walk around condemning the Saudis exclusively here or you sound again, detached from reality and ignorant of who and what the Houthis really are.

There is an ocean of difference between what Saudis are doing and what Russia did and if you cannot see that you may want to read up a bit more on the entire situation and historical context. Was Ukraine launching missiles into Russia for the last 7 years randomly killing Russians? To equate things is patently ridiculous.

Furthermore the Saudis for the last 2 weeks have been trying to have peace discussions as encouraged by the States and the Houthis refused and escalated violence. There are peace talks scheduled for Riyadh and the Houthis won't do it because they "are not on neutral ground" yet have not proposed an alternative. The Saudis are not some exclusive evil regime in this fight so to frame it like this is straight up wrong.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

You keep bringing this up framing Saudi as the sole bad guys in this, but it is detached from reality and demonstrates a huge ignorance of facts / inability to consider with what is actually going on.

The Houthis are a terrorist organization as determined by the UN that launches daily missile / rocket attacks into Saudi Arabia. Just last weekend they blew up a Saudi Aramco site.

Name one country that would stand idle and let a neighbouring territory fire rockets and missiles into its nation without response. The fact that the Houthis hide amongst the Yemeni local population (who of course in large respects support them...) and decide to put their missile / attack launchers in / around civilian buildings, etc. seems to be casually ignored in Saudi's sovereign right to defend itself. So yes your damn right they are going to bomb these people who cowardly decide to go hide amongst local civilian populations. No different than what Canada / States had to do in Afghanistan against the Taliban during those campaigns either.

What would Canada / US do if the people on a nearby side of the border of either country were just launching stray missiles into Vancouver / LA all willy nilly and killing Canadians or Americans and arbitrarily destroying infrastructure? I asked you this in the other thread and didn't get an answer.

You can't walk around condemning the Saudis exclusively here or you sound again, detached from reality and ignorant of who and what the Houthis really are.

There is an ocean of difference between what Saudis are doing and what Russia did and if you cannot see that you may want to read up a bit more on the entire situation and historical context. Was Ukraine launching missiles into Russia for the last 7 years randomly killing Russians? To equate things is patently ridiculous.

Furthermore the Saudis for the last 2 weeks have been trying to have peace discussions as encouraged by the States and the Houthis refused and escalated violence. There are peace talks scheduled for Riyadh and the Houthis won't do it because they "are not on neutral ground" yet have not proposed an alternative. The Saudis are not some exclusive evil regime in this fight so to frame it like this is straight up wrong.

Okay, let's accept that there is some nuance to the armed conflicts (both sides can be bad/wrong).

Now do Jamal Khashoggi.

Or women. Or LGBT people.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Okay, let's accept that there is some nuance to the armed conflicts (both sides can be bad/wrong).

Now do Jamal Khashoggi.

Or women. Or LGBT people.

Don't forget religious minorities and foreign workers from south/east Asia.