OPEC blows Brandon a big fat raspberry

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." - Michael Ledeen, advisor to presidents and American thought leader That quote succinctly summarizes American hubris as experienced by much of the rest of the world over the past 150 years. To the surprise of nobody except the Americans, the rest of the world has noticed. That’s why Mr. Biden has had no luck convincing America’s “friends and allies” among oil producers to increase production. He’s facing mid-terms imminently, and the American electorate get right grumpy about $6/gallon gas no matter how many crappy little countries their military has thrown against the wall lately. The Saudis can’t help. The Mexicans can’t help. The UAE can’t help, even after that beauty peace deal young Kushner gifted them with Israel. The Venezuelans aren’t interested, even with the promise of sanctions relief. Maybe they recall how hard the Americans worked to throw them against the wall. In fact, pretty much the only country willing to ship more gas to the US is Canada, and we’re coming to the rescue as fast as we can. Just a few more decades to sort out those pesky Indigenous land claims, and then a few more to build the infrastructure, and we’ll be there with bells on! All of this because America convinced its EU allies to destroy the Russian economy by boycotting Russian oil. Less oil on the market - prices go up! Who knew? Until yesterday the Americans imagined they had enough clout with OPEC to coerce a production increase. Instead, the vile ingrates did the opposite of what Biden requested, scaling back production by 2 million bbls per day. Meanwhile, how is that Russian economic collapse shaping up? It’s starting to look like Russia may have more friends in the world than we imagined, and it’s the Americans who are increasingly isolated.

What up in the Kingdom?

Doug Saunders, Canada's answer to Thomas Friedman, laid a bit of an egg with his opinion piece in the Globe yesterday, if you want to know my six dollars and thirty cents worth. I mean, what was that other than another not-so-thinly veiled plug for his book?

Ya Doug, we know! You've got a book coming out. Maximum Canada... I hope a hundred million Canadians get to read it someday. Now try to write your column without mentioning that you've a book coming out.

By the way, I'm guessing you've noticed by now you miss-spelled the name of Canada's Immigration Minister. Five times in one editorial. Come on, Doug, pull up your socks! I pay $6.30 every Saturday to read this shit.

But anyway, what's afoot in The Kingdom? Looks to me like the boss princeling is working overtime putting his stamp on things. Let's see... so far, he's engineered the Yemen war.

Epic fail.

The collapse of global oil prices.

Epic fail. As far as I can see, that ambitious strike against Russia and Iran turned out to be a near-mortal self-inflicted wound more than anything.

Let's not forget the brouhaha with Qatar. The only question about that fail is how epic it'll turn out to be in the final analysis.

And now, the putsch. The "night of the long knives" as some are calling it. The KSA hasn't seen this much intrigue since Bandar Bush went AWOL for a spell a few years ago! The Hariri angle is the icing on the cake.

Netanyahu went overboard trying to make hay out of that one. Hmm... maybe Hariri knows something? Maybe he knows that the immediate future of his country is looking rather bleak, and he'd rather spend the next few weeks in Riyadh than in Beirut?

But back to the putsch. One thing I'm wondering; was this a preemptive strike? Did Crown Prince MBS get wind of something and decide he'd rather be the hammer than the nail? In any event, looks like there could be a rush of "high net worth" Saudi refugees looking for a roof soon.

Or a luxury suite. Or a few floors of a five star hotel. Luckily, Canada has the infrastructure in place to accommodate this imminent refugee flow.

The Lebanese won't be a problem either, once the fireworks start. I mean, half those folks already hold Canadian passports. They won't even be refugees... they'll just be coming home!

Hezbollah today, here tomorrow! That's OK too. At least it'll get easier to find a decent tabbouleh. And that divine Bekaa Valley Blonde those people are renowned for.

I wouldn't worry about the Israelis either. Most of those people already hold US or German passports, so let them go there. The rest we can take in as refugees. That would make up for the shame of the MS St. Louis debacle back in '39.

So between a half million Israelis, six million Lebanese, and whoever can escape the clutches of the Insane Clown Prince, I figure we could be welcoming a good ten million refugees in the next few months.

Looks like we'll be well on our way to Maximum Canada!

Why the oil price slump might not last as long as you think

I see where even that indefatigable optimist, Todd Hirsch, is crying "uncle" over low oil prices.


That's quite a climb-down for Todd. He's one of the greatest optimists I've ever run across. Todd has invented so much hilarious shit that he can single-handedly keep a reasonably competent satirist going for years.


Between the gig economy and unemployed lumberjacks reinventing pizza deliveries, this blog has grown rather fond of Todd.


So no offence to Todd, but just as he's bailing out, I'm bailing in.


In case you've not been following the MAKS 2015 Airshow, there's been a ton of interesting goings on going on over there. Seems there's been a steady flow of Arab potentates lining up to kiss the hand of Bad Vlad.


And while these Arab potentates have a number of differences with Mr. Putin, they also have a profoundly persuasive common interest.


None of them want to see $40/bbl oil.


Why would you want to deplete your God-given legacy for forty bucks a barrel when the world would be more than happy to pay you $100 plus?


The major problem is those countries that don't mind poisoning their fresh-water aquifers with willy-nilly fracking all over the place. That would be the US and a few satellite states who have agreed to bend over and spread 'em for a few short years of a fracking bonanza.


Those are the countries that have ramped up the supply and thereby driven down the price. The last nine months of OPEC's open taps have been a message telling the frackers that when push comes to shove, they'll let the upstarts drown in their own oil.


But that can't last forever.

Fort Mac real estate heading down the shitter

We've waxed wise on this topic in the past. In fact, if you were paying attention last March, you would have got out while the getting was good, and would be right now sending a nice cash contribution to Falling Downs for giving you the heads up.

Alas, you may not have been paying attention, in which case it may be too late.

Those OPEC folks are flexing their muscles. They're a little pissy about the US fracking industry stealing their market share, and they have embarked on giving that industry an attitude adjustment. The OPEC bigs in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Kuwait have made it abundantly clear that they're more than happy to keep pumping at 40, 30, even 20 dollars a barrel.

Just because they can.

For a very long time.

Which throws a whole lot of Alberta action into question.

Shell just announced a job cut of 300. If our friends in the Middle East are even remotely serious about $30 oil, Fort Mac is fucked.

All those welders from Newfoundland who were making $150k/yr will be heading home.

All those teenage Somali drug peddlers making even more will go home to Toronto.

All those thousand square foot bungalows that were worth half a million yesterday will be sitting empty...

Don't say I didn't warn ya!

Pot-addled hillbilly beats media big boys to Saudi-war-on-fracking story by months

My Globe and Mail has a multi-page feature about Saudi-Arabia's war on fracking in today's paper. In fact, the story seems to be everywhere these days, especially since the November 27 OPEC meeting in Vienna.

The think tank here at Falling Downs read the tea leaves eight weeks before the OPEC meeting.

By golly, that Puslinch Primo that's been going around here is better than a crystal ball!