CHINA - MYTHCONCEPTIONS Digging around in my archives, I found this article I published when working at Sempra Commodities in April 2004. It's interesting to look back at how the future looked from a vantage point very early in China's rapid industrialisation and modernisation: jkempenergy.com/2004/04/27/c…

US President Donald Trump tells Ukrainian leaders to stop targeting Russian oil refineries. “Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing: He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said. “Let him go after targets — but not diesel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel”

It is dismal and embarrassing that Canada has joined eleven other Western countries in a futile and shameful gesture of sanctions against goods from areas of the West Bank recently settled by Israelis. The accompanying reassertion of support for a two-state solution is pure pomposity. The Palestinians are not a distinct nationality. They are a group of primarily Muslim and some Christian Arab stragglers of the old League of Nations Mandate who were not absorbed into the neighbouring states. The idea of a Palestinian state was popularized by Nasser as a ploy to inflame hostility to Israel and distract Arab populations from the misgovernment of their own rulers. The tragedy of the Palestinians is that their own leaders, whether of the PLO or Hamas, have never wanted a two state solution. They stubbornly insist on one state with no Jews in it. Israel was established by the United Nations, on the joint initiative of the United States and the Soviet Union, specifically as a Jewish state in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. No member of the United Nations has clearer legitimacy. These unenforceable, virtue signaling sanctions, such that they have any impact at all, will fall hardest on the many Palestinians who work in Israel and return daily to the West Bank. These countries have never applied similar strictures to China, Russia, or the numerous dictatorships that practice far worse oppressions. Israel is unique in the region as a democracy that upholds individual rights more scrupulously than any of its neighbours. This gesture of symbolic impotence reveals the moral collapse of much of the West and the readiness of governments, including our own, to truckle to the most unsavoury pressures. Canadians should be ashamed of this antisemitic fellow-traveling.

Russian-speaking [Ukrainians] are a disease that must be eradicated,” says children’s writer (!) Larysa Nitsoi in the media. And apparently no one sees a problem. No one stops her. No one holds her criminally accountable for hate speech, for inciting hostility, or for rhetoric that can be read as a call for violence against the “wrong kind” of Ukrainians. This is what contemporary fascistic Ukraine looks like: a country where millions of its own citizens can be branded by representatives of the post-Maidan intelligentsia as a “disease” to be “treated” or “eradicated” because they speak the "wrong" language. When human beings are described as a contagion, when an entire linguistic community is pathologized and presented as something the national body must be cleansed of, we are no longer talking about an innocent “language debate.” This is the vocabulary of dehumanization. It is the logic of eugenics. It is the rhetoric historically associated with fascism and Nazism. And all of this is unfolding in a state politically, financially, and militarily backed by the West.

Many Canadian critics say the case for a west coast oil pipeline is weak because China is moving swiftly to EVs. They miss key factors. China’s refineries are unusually complex. They don’t just have the physical ability to process heavy oil; a large part of its refining sector has been structurally oriented toward finding discounted, difficult (heavy/sour) barrels because the margins are better than for sweet/light crudes. China also has a huge refining system to feed. If they consumed less oil they would simply export more refined products. In addition, the complex refineries can turn the heavier fractions into valuable diesel, jet fuel and petrochemical feedstocks, complementing China’s industrial economy. Finally, Canadian heavy crude is a good option to address the changing availability and geopolitical reliability of other heavy/sour suppliers, particularly Iran and Venezuela.

Regarding the jobs report today, it's important to remember that employment is measured with error. Think of it like a big poll. The change in August was -42k, but the margin of error around this was +/- 65k (19 times out of 20). www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail… #cdnecon

It doesn't belittle the horror of Israel's genocide in Gaza to say that Hamas has also been a disaster for the Palestinian people. It has been. trib.al/frTZIvy

Joshua Wong, a leading pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, is forced to plead guilty to the supposed crime of seeking international help to stop Beijing's crackdown on Hong Kong's freedoms. trib.al/PLgfJbA

Published in January 2026: “… [Venezuela’s] oil is now part of a petroleum empire stretching from Alaska to Patagonia — all under Washington’s tutelage…” @Opinion bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

As we assess the Venezuelan-US oil deal and the potential impact, in coming years, on Canadian crude sold to US Gulf refineries, I think it’s worth remembering that it takes ~45-55 days to get VZ oil to China and only ~18-20 days to get it from Vancouver. As VZ oil is redirected from China to US, it should leave an opening across the Pacific in the heavy oil market.

Russia accuses Britain of obstructing peace in Ukraine. What it really means is that Britain is helping Ukraine defend itself from Putin's invasion. Putin can have peace today by stopping. trib.al/lCRykpY

Good morning. In the run-up to Friday’s Jackson Hole remarks by Chair Warsh, we are likely to hear several market commentators state that bond markets are "testing" the Federal Reserve by pushing longer-term yields higher. Yet the specific market indicators that would support that narrative don't align. If markets are testing anyone—and I am skeptical of that formulation—they are testing the federal budget's capacity to make room for the significant uptake in the financing demand of a tech sector poised to transform productivity and enhance growth and prosperity. Rather than framing this as who is testing whom, a more accurate view is that markets are looking at a massive calendar of public and private bond issuance at a time when some demand-side anchors historically (China, Japan, GCC flows, etc.) face their own internal issues that limit appetite for US bonds. #economy #markets #federalreserve #bonds #yields

Sir, Canadians have traditionally been very good resources and infrastructure investors. Your country has world leading , private sector financial services capabilities in these sectors. Given your track record, with England's sovereign wealth fund ( hint, massive losses), why should Canadians allow you to manage their investments?

Here's me trying to do a David Attenborough impression over a video of jetfighters crashing in May this year