Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[Bootsy]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

Ya Right!

That Keystone XL thing really worked out well for us.

If Alberta was a state the keystone pipeline would have been put through years ago. Obama is the biggest pipeline supporter out there as long as it fits US needs, under his term the most pipelines have been built in US history.
With that said I don't want to be part of the states for many other reasons but in this case Alberta would benefit more being tied to them than being land locked by provinces who are ignorant to pipelines while benefitting greatly from Alberta's resources.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Did you? how about the line where we spend half what the U.S. does and still have a better overall healthcare outcomes.

If you spend twice as much on anything it aught to be better quality.

What about it?

Canada's healthcare system is slow and shoddy.

There Americans system is expensive but it's still better quality than ours. Would I rather be sick in the US? Absolutely. Would I rather be poor and sick in the US? Absolutely not. But I'm not poor.

[Fuzz]

You would be poor, if you really got sick in the US.

Even with insurance you can be decimated. The featured story reviews a man in his 50s who had insurance, developed pneumonia and was hospitalized for one month and came out with a nearly $500,000 bill. After insurance coverage, their bill was still over $400,000. This was in part due to the hospital’s policy of not just double billing for items but TRIPLE billing....
...the hospital’s total expenses for lab work in 2010 were $27.5 million. Its total charges were $293.2 million, meaning it charged patients about 11 times its costs for lab work.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...are-costs.aspx

about 56 million adults—more than 20 percent of the population between the ages of 19 and 64—will still struggle with health-care-related bills this year, according to NerdWallet Health. And if you think only Americans without health insurance face financial troubles, think again. NerdWallet estimates nearly 10 million adults with year-round health-insurance coverage will still accumulate medical bills that they can't pay off this year.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148

And we've gone way off topic. But the facts are, unless you are really wealthy, you run a big risk of going broke if you get sick in the US, even with insurance. I'd rather have a less than perfect system that saves your life, than a flawed one that ruins you for life. And the US system is far from perfect.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Buster

What about it?

Canada's healthcare system is slow and shoddy.

There Americans system is expensive but it's still better quality than ours. Would I rather be sick in the US? Absolutely. Would I rather be poor and sick in the US? Absolutely not. But I'm not poor.

The Americans don't have a system, but a cluttered, ransacked hierarchy of administrative systems whereby the vast majority suffer from overpriced, and overextended care.

We talk about the Mayo Clinic as if Joe Blow with his assistant manager job at Walmart can walk in and get the best experimental cancer treatment. Nope, Joe Blow dies of mediocre chemotherapy in some forgotten corner while his family tries to figure out how to get Medicare to cover the balance, and pay for groceries in the same month.

What a terrible joke of a comparison between our excellent (and still overstretched) national healthcare, and their nightmare poorhouse/mansion excuse.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Buster

What about it?

Canada's healthcare system is slow and shoddy.

There Americans system is expensive but it's still better quality than ours. Would I rather be sick in the US? Absolutely. Would I rather be poor and sick in the US? Absolutely not. But I'm not poor.

Do you have any experience with the US health care system? I have. It was an eye opening experience.

Also, it's rated like 15 spots below Canada worldwide. Sure there's some good places in the States and of course some benefits, but it's overall much worse than ours.

I don't think your rich enough to get the care you think you'd get there. I could be wrong, I don't know you at all, maybe your a millionaire, but a lot of insurance isn't as comprehensive as you may think (and insurance companies there still love to screw over their policy holders when they can), and health care costs add up quickly.

And that's not even counting if you have a permanent condition or major illness.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Buster

What about it?

Canada's healthcare system is slow and shoddy.

There Americans system is expensive but it's still better quality than ours. Would I rather be sick in the US? Absolutely. Would I rather be poor and sick in the US? Absolutely not. But I'm not poor.

Admittedly in the large cities it can be very slow but even in the USA it's slow as hell in the cities. I took a gall bladder attack in Dallas and by the time I got admitted for treatment the attack was starting to go away,they were more concerned about my travel insurance than me puking bile in a paper towel from the pain.. that is shoddy service!
(I took the demerol anyway )

BTW, the other attacks I had before surgery were in Calgary,Vancouver and Medicine Hat and all treated me fantastic. I'm not sure what it's like now with Obamacare but the US system was a joke before, people would loose their houses if they or loved ones got really sick, tax payers should never have to sell a house to treat a disease.

[chedder]

... and this is no longer the Alberta oil thread. Too bad as it was interesting

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by chedder

... and this is no longer the Alberta oil thread. Too bad as it was interesting

I think we should crowdfund to pay KevanGuy to just follow threads and split them into new threads in real time. This came from the layoff thread, now the Canadian vs American healthcare thread will come from here!

In all seriousness, I always find mods splitting threads is the best solution to the community's inability to stay on topic. There isn't much discussion on CP compared to the old days, so whenever there is decent discussion (like there is here, imo) it's better to quickly separate it out and say "here, you can continue the discussion in the appropriate thread" than saying "stop the off topic discussion".

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Instead of complaining about it going off topic, maybe bring up something interesting that will drive the conversation back to the original topic?

Conversations flow like this in real life, so why shouldn't they on the internet? It's hard to keep hundreds of users honed on the original topic if an interesting tangent develops. No one's doing it on purpose, it's just what happens naturally when people converse.

At some point a mod will come in if things get too far off base for too long. Do you really want them wrapping our knuckles every time someone says something that isn't 100% about the topic at hand? You would need a fleet of mods just to keep up with that.

[stampsx2]

Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix

Instead of complaining about it going off topic, maybe bring up something interesting that will drive the conversation back to the original topic?

Conversations flow like this in real life, so why shouldn't they on the internet? It's hard to keep hundreds of users honed on the original topic if an interesting tangent develops. No one's doing it on purpose, it's just what happens naturally when people converse.

At some point a mod will come in if things get too far off base for too long. Do you really want them wrapping our knuckles every time someone says something that isn't 100% about the topic at hand? You would need a fleet of mods just to keep up with that.

Was going to say the exact same thing. Why not post some breaking news about opec or a prediction where oil will be when iran comes online.

Nothing new has happened especially over the weekend so the conversation evolves till something new comes up. Same as a conversation at a dinner table.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Interesting article a friend shared with me this weekend.

Brings up a few points for me...

1. From the article... "“It takes $10bn and five to ten years to launch a deep-water project. It takes $10m and just 20 days to drill for shale,” he said, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos."

Most AB Oil Sands projects are somewhere in the middle on this front. Especially brownfield expansion. Scale is also relevant, Alberta projects have notable scale, relative to a liquids rich shale well that will decline to 10-20% of its initial production within 2 years. US Shale production is a hamster wheel in the purest sense. These fields have a short lifespan if you're not constantly pumping "sustaining capital" in them. Oil Sands have significant sustaining capital requirements, but nothing like shale production. This is the nature of low EROEI production. Both of these resources are not top tier assets.

2. The US will undoubtedly become a global exporter under these conditions, especially considering the trends on vehicle use in their young population. Young people don't have good job prospects. It is effecting their home buying patterns, but also their vehicle buying and fuel consumption patterns.

3. People underestimate the effect of "cheap" capital and poor investor judgement in the rise of US shale production. Is this thing for real or not? Cash rich corps and VCs COULD keep the sector alive... as they're buying Shale assets on 5 - 15 cents on the dollar right now, this brings the effective cost of production down, but why would they do this with such short lived reserve life indicies?

4. The Saud's criticize the Russian's ability to co-operate with OPEC because they have public reporting requirements to uphold. Why on earth then is there talk about floating a public offering for anything to do with Aramco? Their upstream assets aren't included in the offering, but is this not the beginning of the process towards loss of control over your information?

5. What does it mean, exactly, for the Saudi's to want to defend their market share? I have yet to see a rational explanation for this statement.

[GGG]

Shake is clearly the new swing producer.

It theory once the over supply is worked through the syst it should lead to a more stable price for oil. The 5-10 year timelines of major projects causes lots of new investment, then a crash, then lots of new investment. There is a Lag between dollars committed and oil out of the ground which leads to over supply.

With shale this lag is eliminated so the investment question will become are we cheaper than the marginal shale barrel. I believe we are which is good for Alberta.

The Saudis strategy appears to be to punish banks who are back the shale guys making them less likely to extend dubious credit lines to them in the future. If you forced shale to expand organicly rather than on huge debt it it slows their ability to respond to the market.

[burn_this_city]

I don't see shale rumbling back to the pre-crash frenzy ever again. Cheap credit caused the supply glut and many of those investors have lost their shirts. I think they will have a much tougher time raising capital going forward. This bubble was caused by overzealous investors chasing returns in an era of cheap money.

[puckedoff]

^ Money is still cheap, and people are still greedy. I don't see any reason why we won't end up in a similar situation a few years down the road.

[nik-]

and memories are short

[heep223]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

^ Money is still cheap, and people are still greedy. I don't see any reason why we won't end up in a similar situation a few years down the road.

Yes but rates are going up in the US. After banks write-down and restructure the bloated balance sheets in Energy, they're going to significantly tighten up credit to that space. It will be harder to get debt capital. Given that's it's pretty much impossible to issue equity, and there's no cash flow in the industry for capex, there is literally nothing to replace these massive declines in shale. All of the production sitting behind pipe has been used up, which IMO is the main reason for the robust production through 2015.

The market will see this through 1H 2016 and also will see that for the first time maybe ever, there isn't any spare OPEC capacity sitting there. The environment is going to be completely different in about 12 months. As long as demand continues to chug along at 1-2%.

Not really sure about your "people are still greedy" comment. Corporations look at projects based on IRRs and NPV, and all the economics have to support returns higher than their cost of capital.

[burn_this_city]

http://boereport.com/2016/01/25/saud...olicy-is-that/

Irving refinery buys oil from the Saudis.

[ranchlandsselling]

Can't help...

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/carbon-clock/

Interesting "carbon clock" on bloomberg.

[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

http://boereport.com/2016/01/25/saud...olicy-is-that/

Irving refinery buys oil from the Saudis.

Big surprise (to a lot it will be, which I suppose is the premise of the article).

Angers me quite a bit.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by ranchlandsselling

Can't help...

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/carbon-clock/

Interesting "carbon clock" on bloomberg.

EDIT: Ok I found the formula, my browser didn't work the first time. NM. However, point still stands, people need to be discussing more than just production of CO2 but restriction of absorbing it via much larger environmental crimes like burning down the vegetation this site shows to reduce airborne CO2.