‘They’ve doubled’: Costs spiking for southern Alberta greenhouse operators

Yesterday
Eloise Therien / Global News


Like many Albertans, greenhouse operators are feeling the pinch of inflation and other rising expenses.

For Connie and Cullen Ng, who own Dan's Greenhouses in Lethbridge, the major increase in costs over the last year has been related to heating.

As a seasonal facility, they begin planting in the winter.

"They've doubled since last year," Cullen said.

"We just kind of have to budget it in, we just have to spend more money on everything."

But the company, which has accumulated many regular customers over 65 years in business, is hesitant to bump up prices on its plants, flowers and other items.

"Everything went up (in price), but we care more about supporting local -- local business," Connie explained. "We try to keep the price (for shoppers) as low as possible. So lots of stuff is the same price as last year."

Paul De Jonge, who owns Broxburn Vegetables & Cafe just outside the city, said he has seen at least a 10 to 20 per cent increase in overall costs this year.

"Electricity costs, we've seen a steady increase over the last year," he said. "Some of my shipping costs to bring in my plants from B.C., the costs doubled. So rather significant."

Whole Leaf, an indoor lettuce producer in Coaldale, has a co-generation facility in partnership with Signalta, which offsets its natural gas, electricity and carbon dioxide.

Despite this shielding them from those price increases, general manager Archie Mpofu said the facility is still feeling the pinch in other areas.

"We've seen about a 30 per cent increase in some of the inputs we use, including fertilizers and packaging supplies," Mpofu said.

"We're having challenges right now with just how much input costs have gone up in the past year."

Read more:
Albertans shocked twice by sky-high power bills caused by ‘estimated’ readings

Shipping to chains across Canada such as Wendy's, transportation has also proven to be a major expense.

"It's been a challenge because we are not able to pass all those costs to our customers, otherwise we'd have huge increases in produce prices," Mpofu said.

"We're just waiting it out and seeing how the economy can do better."

Immigrant professors say they need to “act white” in Canadian academia

The Canadian Press
Yesterday 

Racialized faculty members not only carry the emotional labour in an academic institution, but they also find themselves constantly needing to “transform themselves” in order to be accepted by their colleagues and students, according to a Black professor at Edmonton’s MacEwan University.

Speaking at the recent 24th Metropolis Canada Conference in Vancouver, Hellen Gateri, an associate professor at the university’s school of social work, was one of three immigrants working in academia who shared stories about the racism and discrimination faced while working at a Canadian university.

“Sometimes when we are in meetings with our colleagues, we are ignored,” Gateri said. “Our voices, the issues we bring forward, nobody takes them seriously.”

In addition, she receives “demeaning” comments, being asked to repeat herself or told that she’s not pronouncing a word correctly from both colleagues and students.

Gateri’s experiences are not isolated. According to the Equity Myth, a 2017 data-based study that highlights racialized and Indigenous faculty members’ experiences in Canadian universities, racialized scholars are overworked, their work less-valued and they are underpaid compared to their white colleagues.

Gateri recalled numerous instances where, prior to the start of a class, students would walk in, ask her if she’s teaching the class and then immediately stare at each other when she would tell them yes.

She highlighted that racialized and immigrant faculty members are viewed by their colleagues and students as threatening because they don’t make up the status quo.

“For me, being Black, when I complain or when I raise an issue, there’s always those that say because she’s Black, she’s hostile, she’s aggressive, she’s confrontational,” said Gateri.

“When we enter the academia, we have to prove that is where we belong.”

Teaching evaluations are one of the criteria used to evaluate performance, but Gateri says they carry subtle forms of microaggression and discrimination from students.

Rita Dhungel, who’s also an assistant professor in social work at MacEwan University, echoed this experience. Rather than evaluating her performance as an educator, Dhungel noted that it’s common for students to comment on her accent instead and how they have a hard time understanding her at times.

“I’m totally fine if they talk about my knowledge, about the contents,” she said. “But when they talk about accents or when I don’t know the location in Edmonton – c’mon. We’re new to communities.”

Dhungel says she has to put a lot of work into proving she belongs as an immigrant in academia.

Dhungel experiences microaggressive behaviours every single day—intentional or not—where her abilities and experiences are dismissed because of her accent.

One of the biggest challenges that she said she faces as an immigrant working in Canadian academia is the high expectations from students. She added that students tend to focus more on the local context of education, and often don’t seem interested in the international knowledge and experiences she offers as an immigrant.

Research conducted with 89 racialized faculty at ten Canadian universities as part of the larger study of racialization at the university in 2012 highlighted the emphasis of most Canadian universities on a Eurocentric curriculum. The study found that denial of racism is common, especially by “those who are influenced by a liberal ideology that unless there is the intention to be racist, it does not exist.”

Indeed, when Dhungel brings any forms of racism or discrimination she’s experienced in the classroom to the attention of her supervisor, she said that she’s asked, “Are you sure they meant that?”

The Equity Myth found that racialized and Indigenous scholars are hired less often, and are unlikely to be considered for promotions and tenure.

For Gateri, the comments in student evaluations add to this sense of pressure to do better and “act white” to be able to advance professionally.

She says training and promotion opportunities are not determined fairly and it is more difficult for racialized faculty to access professional networks, compared with white colleagues.

“We can network among ourselves and by meeting other people who are willing to support us, but sometimes, it’s very hard, even to network with our own colleagues who don’t like us and don’t want us to be in positions where we’re teaching,” she said.

Despite it all, Gateri perseveres. “I still believe there are people who see what other racialized people will go through, and they’re there to support us,” she said. “That’s where I stay positive and continue doing this work that I do everyday.”

Aaron Hemens, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media

Charest, Poilievre spar over convoy, Huawei in raucous Conservative leadership debate

John Paul Tasker - Yesterday - 

The two frontrunners in the race for the Conservative Party's top job traded blows over their records in the first leadership debate of the campaign Thursday.

Making it clear who he thinks his main opponent is, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre used much of his speaking time to attack former Quebec premier Jean Charest, a man he branded as a tax-hiking Liberal interloper.

Poilievre accused Charest of being too critical of the anti-vaccine mandate protest convoy that occupied much of downtown Ottawa earlier this year, saying he was proud to stand with "law-abiding" and "peaceful" truckers who were protesting COVID-19 restrictions.

"Charest learned about the trucker convoy on the CBC like other Liberals and he misrepresented them. He believes I should be censored, cancelled from this leadership," Poilievre said, referring to Charest's past remarks condemning the MP's warm embrace of the protesters as disqualifying.

"I don't share his Liberal viewpoint. The truckers have more integrity in their pinky finger than you had in your entire scandal-plagued cabinet," Poilievre said to Charest.

Charest said Poilievre's aggressive politics are tearing the party apart.

"I've been a Conservative all my life," Charest said. He said standing against the lawlessness that was on display in convoy protests in Ottawa, Windsor, Ont., and Coutts, Alta., doesn't make him any less of a Conservative.

In response to the charge that he's a closet Liberal, Charest offered a defence of fiscal conservatism and cited economic successes in Quebec on his watch. He said he lowered income taxes and championed natural resources development while running the province — two things he's promising to do at the federal level if he makes it to the Prime Minister's Office.

Poilievre attacks Charest over his Huawei ties

Charest said he was best placed to lead the national Conservative movement because he fought off the separatists in the 1995 referendum and won three elections as a federalist premier in a province starkly divided over the national question.

"I fought and won against the separatists. It's not this guy who's going to intimidate me," Charest said of Poilievre.


© Blair Gable/Reuters; Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press; Justin Tang/The Canadian Press; The Canadian Press; Chris Young/The Canadian Press;Scott AitchisonConservative leadership candidates Pierre Poilievre (top left), Leslyn Lewis (top centre), Jean Charest (top right), Roman Baber (bottom left), Patrick Brown (bottom centre) and Scott Aitchison.

Poilievre raised Charest's past lobbying work with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that has been singled out by Western intelligence agencies as an espionage threat.

"If we're going to unite this party, we have to come clean. Mr. Charest needs to come clean about how much money he got from Huawei," Poilievre said.

Charest tried to answer but the MP spoke over him repeatedly, asking "How much?" and "Just the number," before the moderators, lawyer Jamil Jivani and journalist Candice Malcolm, had to intervene to stop the cross-talk.

"This is not a student council," Charest shot back at Poilievre. "Is this the kind of country you want? Where people aren't allowed to talk?"

Charest never did say how much money he made from the Huawei contract.

The former premier defended his lobbying efforts, saying the previous Conservative government welcomed Huawei into Canada to help build out the country's 5G cellular network.

He also said he worked with the Canadian government to help secure the release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadians who were held captive by China for three years.

"If you want evidence of that, ask the wife of Michael Kovrig," he said. (Kovrig's former wife, Vina Nadjibulla, has said she is grateful for Charest's efforts to help free her ex-partner.)

Charest said he's the best candidate to take on Trudeau

Charest presented himself as the candidate best positioned to lead the party to victory in crucial battlegrounds like the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver's Lower Mainland and Quebec, regions where he said his brand of conservatism will resonate. Charest said, of all the candidates on stage, he was the one who had the best shot of unseating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the next federal election.

"If you're tired of losing in campaigns and you've had enough of handing over power to Trudeau, then you want a leader who will unite the party and elect a national Conservative government," Charest said, suggesting Poilievre's more avowedly right-wing approach to politics could be a liability for the party in a general election.

Poilievre pitched himself as the leadership hopeful who is unabashedly Conservative, a candidate who isn't afraid to stand up to the Liberals, the mainstream media and leftists, groups who he said are intent on silencing Conservatives.

He said he wants to put an end to "big bossy government," wind down vaccine mandates, tackle inflation through spending cuts, rein in the Bank of Canada and defund the CBC.

Poilievre said his top priorities are cutting taxes, fighting inflation and "empowering the working class."

"I'm running for prime minister to give you back control of your life by making Canada the freest country on earth," he said.

Poilievre, Lewis squabble over truckers, abortion

While Poilievre sought to present himself as the champion of anti-mandate activists, another contender in this race, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis, said Poilievre only stood with the cause when it became a "popular" thing to do.

Lewis said Poilievre said nothing about COVID-19 measures like lockdowns and curfews in the House of Commons during earlier stages of the pandemic or out on the campaign trail when running for re-election last fall.

"You did not speak up until it was convenient," she said. "You did not speak for the truckers and you did not speak the loudest."

Independent Ontario MPP Roman Baber, who was turfed from the Ontario Progressive Conservative caucus last year over his opposition to public health measures, said he's the only candidate who stridently opposed COVID restrictions from the outset of this health crisis.

"We shouldn't be afraid of the media or the left-wing Twitter mob. We need to do right by Canadians. We failed to stand up for Canadians. The Conservative Party didn't stand up for them against lockdowns, passports and mandates. I'm uniquely positioned to speak to those voters," Baber said.

Baber, an immigrant born and raised in the former Soviet Union, said he's concerned Canada is becoming a communist country like the one his family left in the 1990s.

He said, under Trudeau, the CBC is like Pravda, the former state-run newspaper published by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. "I am committed to restoring Canada's democracy," he said.

Lewis, who is a social conservative candidate in this race, chastised Poilievre for his ambiguity on the issue of abortion, a topic that has become more salient in recent days as the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to overturn a landmark ruling.

"He ran from the media in the last few days. He doesn't want to declare where he stands," Lewis said, referencing the Poilievre campaign's relative silence on the issue in the wake of reports the U.S. top court will strike down the Roe v. Wade decision.

"Is he pro-choice or pro-life? As a leader, we'll have to declare that. The media will hound him. He's going to deal with social conservative issues, which he has been running from this entire campaign."

While pressed by Lewis, Poilievre didn't say where he stood on the issue of abortion on the debate stage.

Aitchison pitches himself as a party unifier

Conservative MP Scott Aitchison, a former mayor of Huntsville, Ont., presented himself as unifier, a candidate more focused on bringing together a fractured party than engaging in name-calling and petty squabbles with his fellow candidates.

"Politics are increasingly divided and we've stopped respecting those we disagree with," he said.

"Until we can work together as a team, Canadians are not going to trust us. Here we are calling each other names. What Canadian is going to trust this lot? We've got to do better."

Aitchison said the Conservative Party must be reasonable and its leaders must stop peddling "conspiracy theories," an apparent reference to Lewis, who has raised red flags about the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization's role in the pandemic.

"We don't want to scare voters away. Every time I hear another conspiracy theory I think, 'Well there goes another group of swing voters in the GTA that aren't going to come our way.'"

Aitchison said some COVID restrictions were necessary but he criticized the federal government's approach to health care. He said, if elected, he'd boost Ottawa's share of health spending to increase hospital capacity and avoid a repeat of pandemic-related lockdowns.

He also said he doesn't agree with the other candidates when they say they want to "burn down the CBC."

He said the public broadcaster tells important Canadian stories and brings the country together but it needs to be "refocused and reined in."

The Canada Strong and Free Network, the host of Thursday's debate, extended invitations to all of the party's six "verified" candidates.

All of them, with the exception of Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, were on stage tonight. Brown declined to attend the event.

Conservatives could hit 500k members as leadership campaigns scramble for supporters

Alex Boutilier - Yesterday 

Global News
© Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press file photo


The Conservative party is on pace to hit as many as half a million members as leadership candidates furiously scramble to sign up supporters, three sources tell Global News.

That number would almost double the roughly 269,000 eligible voters in the party's 2020 leadership contest, which saw Erin O’Toole narrowly upset Peter MacKay to lead the party.

Read more:
Six candidates make the final cut for Conservative leadership race

It is “far too early to speculate on the total number of memberships” expected to be sold during the leadership contest, party president Rob Batherson said in a statement to Global News. But Batherson said there is “a lot of interest” in joining the party.

“The Conservative Party of Canada appreciates the work of the leadership candidates and their campaigns in signing up members and are extremely grateful for the tireless efforts of our staff in processing and verifying the countless number of new memberships that arrive every day,” Batherson said.

One party source cautioned that, while the party is seeing considerable growth in its membership rolls during the latest leadership contest, the final number of eligible voters “could be more, could be less” than 500,000.

That’s because each leadership campaign will have the ability to scour the membership lists and challenge their rivals’ sign-ups. Campaigns have until June 3 to sign up their prospective supporters, and any last-minute surges or challenges could affect the final number.

Poilievre favourite to win Conservative leadership race: poll

While such a jump in membership numbers is good for both party coffers and their voter identification efforts, two sources said it will present logistical challenges for the party running the leadership contest.

The sources said the task of validating and getting mail-in ballots out to hundreds of thousands of new supporters will be significant for the party’s HQ, which has seen some high-profile staffing exits after Erin O’Toole’s ouster.

“If it’s that high, the party will have to delay the vote is my guess,” said one Conservative source, who agreed to discuss internal party issues with Global News on the condition the person not be named. The source suggested the party was “three to four weeks behind in processing” memberships.

“Just processing the memberships, and then mailing (ballots) out with enough time to get them back, that’s going to be real tough given how much the party is struggling (in processing memberships) before the surge.”

Read more
Conservatives ban pre-paid credit cards after Poilievre camp warns of membership ‘fraud’

While the party has been in the throes of another leadership contest since O’Toole’s unprecedented caucus revolt in February, the various candidate’s camps have been less focused on persuading existing members than signing up new supporters eligible to vote in the contest.

The campaigns keep their membership sales numbers a jealously guarded secret. But Global News previously reported that less than 48 hours after O’Toole’s ouster — and before the official start of the campaign — Conservative Party HQ was already seeing a surge in new member sign-ups.

The sheer volume of new membership sales have surprised party insiders. But because the campaigns are loath to brag about their membership sign-ups, it’s not clear if the numbers suggest a genuine spike in interest in the Conservative brand or a hostile takeover by a perceived outsider candidate — or some combination of both.

The contest's perceived frontrunner, Carleton MP and former cabinet minister Pierre Poilievre, has been drawing significant crowds at his events across the country. But sources close to Patrick Brown, the Brampton mayor and former Ontario PC leader, have said that their candidate is furiously working the phones to appeal to new party members.

Read more:
An inside look at Patrick Brown’s pitch for selling Conservative party memberships

Multiple stories about Brown’s private appeals to various ethnic communities have also leaked out to the press.

Jean Charest has also had considerable success in raising money — the campaign claimed to have surpassed the $1 million mark in early April — suggesting that despite lackluster crowds and a quiet campaign, the former Quebec premier does have deep pockets of support. He also has a team of experienced organizers, including former party executive director Janet Fryday Dorey, working the phones.

With other candidates from the social conservative wing disqualified from the race, Haldimand-Norfolk MP Leslyn Lewis will likely benefit from that faction’s significant organization and motivated voter pool.

The two other candidates vying for the leadership, Parry Sound-Muskoka MP Scott Aitchison and former Ontario PC MPP Roman Baber, have smaller profiles within the conservative movement. But five of the candidates will have the opportunity to debate each other Thursday evening, when the Canada Strong and Free Networking conference — formerly known as the Manning Centre conference — kicks off in Ottawa.

Read more:
Joel Etienne demands appeal to disqualification from Conservative leadership

It’s an unofficial leadership event, but an important one, with conservative faithful from across the country watching.

The next Conservative leader will be announced on Sept. 10.

Federal government must do more to fight spread of disinformation, polarization on social media: CSIS director

GUESS WHO DRAFTED THE LIBERALS SOCIAL MEDIA LEGISLATION

The spread of disinformation and polarization via social media is one of the biggest threats to social cohesion in Canada and the federal government needs to do more to fight it, says the head of Canada’s spy agency.


“Canada is an attractive target for foreign interference,” CSIS Director David Vigneault said in a recent speech.

“The use of social media and other online platforms as vectors of disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and hate spread by both individuals and states continues to increase and accelerate. This type of information manipulation and propaganda can have serious consequences,” Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault said during a speech to University of British Columbia students Wednesday.

“I do believe this is one of the most important questions about social cohesion in the country for the next number of years,” he added later.

Vigneault was responding to a question from a student who asked how CSIS is dealing with the spread of misinformation and increasing polarization on social media platforms, “specifically Meta and Twitter.”

Vigneault began by saying that one of the complex issues for government agencies such as his as well as the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the RCMP is figuring out “who should be looking at social media.”

Ultimately, he says CSIS’ work is “very targeted” and a “small approach” compared to the magnitude of the spread of disinformation online.

“We have the mandate and the authorities to look through social media, but it has to be targeted, it has to be specific,” he explained. “What would not be legitimate and what I would not want to see in a democracy is for the intelligence service to just to go out and monitor social media writ large.

“That would not work, and I can tell you, we would not have the resources and it would also not be effective.”

CSIS increasingly worried about violent online rhetoric

Chris Selley: Official Canadian panic over internet 'misinformation' will not end well

He says that’s where academia and researchers can step in and help Canada monitor and fight back against the spread of problematic discourse and foreign interference online, namely by doing widespread monitoring in a way that CSIS and other intelligence agencies can’t without a warrant.

But ultimately, he also thinks there is still more to be done by Ottawa to curb the rising threat of dangerous online discourse.

“I think the federal government needs to do more,” he told the audience, though he acknowledged that government’s role in regulating social media platforms is a “very contentious political issue” and raises “absolutely critical” questions.

“It’s very complex, and the more we talk about how best to address it, the less chances we’re going to have to find the wrong solution to it,” he added.

But Vigneault stopped short of saying what he thinks governments should do to better police and fight back against problematic rhetoric on online platforms.

During his speech, the CSIS director reiterated his concerns about the growth and threat of extremist ideological views, referred to as ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE), in Canada.

Canada divides IMVE into four categories: xenophobic (such as racially motivated attacks), anti-authority, gender-driven (such as the 2018 Toronto van attack) and other grievance-driven violence.

Speaking to parliamentarians last week, Vigneault said that almost half of the agency’s counterterrorism resources is now devoted to countering the threat posed by IMVEs.

“That is a staggering number when you think about it,” he said.

Vigneault also renewed his agency’s warnings in the face of increased attempts of foreign interference by hostile states, who often target Canada’s multicultural communities in an attempt to sow discord or spread misinformation and disinformation.

“Canada is an attractive target for foreign interference. Hostile activity by state actors also targets the fabric of Canada’s multicultural society, seeking to influence Canadian communities through threats, manipulation and coercion. Some of these communities are being exploited to advance the interests of the offending state,” he told students.

He specifically pointed a finger at China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party.

“In the last number of years, we have seen an increase in activities by China that has directed at our values our economic prosperity or democracy,” he said.

More specifically, he accused the CCP of using recent “national security” laws that force Chinese companies and individuals, as well as anyone or company established in China, to share information as requested with the government as a gun against the head of its own people and diaspora.

“It creates the environment for coercion, to force people anywhere in the world to collaborate with the intelligence services for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, often to the detriment of the individual involved or to the country that they are now they are living in,” he added.

Christopher Nardi - Yesterday

Brazil's Petrobras posts $9 billion profit as Bolsonaro rails against company

Gram Slattery and Roberto Samora
Thu, May 5, 2022,


RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil's Petrobras posted a first-quarter net income that beat forecasts on Thursday, just minutes after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro railed against the state-run oil company's profitability, saying its executives had no sympathy for ordinary people.

In a securities filing, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the company is formally known, posted a quarterly net income of 44.56 billion reais ($8.86 billion), above a Refinitiv consensus estimate of 43.5 billion reais and almost 40 times greater than the same quarter last year.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, came in at 77.71 billion reais, slightly above the Refinitiv estimate of 76.3 billion reais.

In comments accompanying the results, Petrobras attributed the profit jump to factors including high Brent crude oil prices, wider margins in its diesel business and reduced liquefied natural gas imports. It noted that its divestment program had slowed from the previous quarter.

The first-quarter results, however, were largely overshadowed by comments made by Bolsonaro during a weekly broadcast on multiple social media platforms, just minutes before the results were published.

In a particularly free-wheeling address, he said Petrobras was committing a "crime" and a "rape" against Brazil by posting bumper profits, while squeezing Brazilian consumers at the gas pump.

The far-right Bolsonaro said he would not interfere with Petrobras' operations, but implored the company not to raise fuel prices any further.

Bolsonaro faces a tough fight in his bid for a second term as president in the October election and has been trailing the left-wing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in opinion surveys.

Petrobras has a policy of pegging domestic fuel prices to international rates, a policy which has come under fire as prices have skyrocketed amid the war in Ukraine.

In a statement accompanying Petrobras' results, Chief Executive José Mauro Coelho, who took the reins in April after his predecessor was fired amid a spat over domestic fuel prices, said the company was contributing to society though taxation and dividends.

"All of this generates economic development throughout the entire chain of production, creating employment, wealth and tax income for the nation," Coelho wrote.

"This quarter, we will pay to federal, state and municipal governments an amount equal to one and a half times our net income in taxes."

The company announced ordinary dividend payments of 3.715 reais per share early on Thursday. The government is by far its largest shareholder.

($1 = 5.03 reais)

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro and Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo; editing by Richard Pullin and Leslie Adler)

U.S. Shale’s Cash Bonanza Will Wipe Out $300 Billion Loss

Kevin Crowley
Thu, May 5, 2022, 


(Bloomberg) -- It may have taken an investor rebellion, a pandemic and a war in Europe, but U.S. shale oil and gas producers are now on the cusp of making back their losses from the last decade.

The industry is on course to make $172 billion of free cash flow this year, enough to wipe out 60% of its losses from 2010 through 2019, according to Deloitte LLP. With smaller gains already chipping away at the $292 billion deficit in 2020 and 2021, U.S. shale should be back in the black next year

It’s been a long road. When small domestic oil and gas producers pioneered the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the 2000s, it seemed like a wealth of riches was imminent. But they were almost too successful, pumping so much that natural gas prices spiraled into a long-term decline through the 2010s. A surge in oil output followed, and OPEC allowed crude prices to collapse in 2014 in an attempt to win back market share from the U.S., which later overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer.

Investors also got burned. Shale companies borrowed heavily to fund production growth, resulting in massively negative cash flow. Energy went from more than 16% of the S&P 500 Index in 2008 to 2% in 2020.

All those trends have now reversed. Shareholders pushed shale to become more financially disciplined, while the pandemic forced executives to cut back on production and spending. Now, with the war in Ukraine causing oil prices to soar above $100 a barrel, the turnaround is almost complete.

The industry is now leveraging the “short-cycled nature of shales to quickly monetize an opportunity, without giving away discipline,” said Amy Chronis, managing partner of Deloitte’s Houston office. “The recent oil and natural gas price surge has given the shale industry a shot in the arm.”

Investors are taking notice. Nine of the 10 top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year are oil companies. Energy is now 4.4% of the S&P 500 Index, up from 2.7% at the beginning of the year. Brent crude has advanced 42% this year to $110.69 a barrel as at 2:13 p.m. in New York.

(Updates chart source, adds crude price in final paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Fossil fuel companies like Shell and BP are raking in massive profits, and this could be just the beginning


Tristan Bove
Thu, May 5, 2022, 

Eddie Seal—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Oil prices have been soaring this year, as Western sanctions hit the Russian economy hard, disrupting the global oil supply from one of the world’s largest producers. But while high gasoline prices at the pump make life difficult for consumers, fossil fuel companies are making a killing.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine over two months ago, Brent crude, an international benchmark for oil pricing, has surged past $100 a barrel, the highest oil has sold for since 2012.

According to the latest round of quarterly reports from the world’s largest oil and gas companies, the fossil fuel industry has been benefiting massively from this surge. Demand for energy this year has soared as economies rebound from historically low demand during the pandemic, and coupled with a constrained supply from Russia, one of the world’s largest fuel exporters, the rest of 2022 could be just as profitable for fossil fuel companies.

Oil companies posting big profits

The COVID pandemic hit the oil industry hard as global industry came to a standstill and the need for fuel collapsed. But oil demand had begun to steadily rebound in 2022.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, subsequent sanctions on Russia and the exit of Western oil and gas companies from the country sent prices soaring, and fossil fuel companies are reaping the rewards.

British petroleum company Shell announced their quarterly profits on Thursday, posting a record $9.1 billion in earnings. That’s compared to $6.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Although Shell posted the highest profits, other major oil companies also announced major gains.

BP announced it hit $6.2 billion in first quarter earnings, up from the $4.1 billion reported last quarter. French oil major TotalEnergies also reported a $9 billion profit in the first quarter, up 32% from the last quarter of 2021. U.S.-based Chevron reported $6.3 billion in earnings, up from $5.1 billion last quarter.

The windfall comes despite many oil majors making the call to end most investment projects and relationships in Russia this year in the wake of the invasion. Shell, BP, Halliburton, and ExxonMobil have all suspended their operations in Russia to comply with Western sanctions, but the withdrawal appears to have done little damage to these companies’ earnings.

Oil remains highly volatile, with factors other than sanctions and the Ukraine War affecting the commodity, but analysts still believe that prices this year will stay high, and major oil companies are likely to continue bringing in high profits as energy costs around the world soar.

A strong year ahead

A number of factors have collided in the early months of 2022 to send oil prices swinging wildly.

Prices first went over $100 a barrel at the end of February when Russia invaded Ukraine and continued rising for several weeks, nearly topping $140 a barrel in March.

Prices have since been in a constant state of volatility, dropping below $100 later in March of this year, when demand for oil dropped in China, the world’s largest crude importer, in response to a resurgent COVID-19 wave. But prices rebounded quickly, and did so again in April after another wave of city-wide lockdowns in China impacted demand.

The price swings have led some analysts to revise their earlier worst-case scenario predictions of $200 oil barrels this year, but that doesn’t mean that the good times are ending for the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.

While slower demand in China will continue to be important for oil prices, demand in the rest of the world is continuing to surge, as countries move past pandemic-era restrictions and industries such as travel reopen.

“Except for China, which is still imposing a zero-Covid policy, the economy reopening worldwide has been ongoing for some time,” oil analyst Lukman Leong recently told trading platform Capital.com on Wednesday. ​​“If there are no more shocking factors and [the Russia–Ukraine] conflict does not worsen, ideally, oil should range from $100–$110 per barrel this year.”

While prices are likely to fluctuate, oil will likely stay around $100 a barrel for the rest of the year, according to many analysts.

“Because of war-related trade and production disruptions, the price of Brent crude oil is expected to average $100 a barrel in 2022,” the World Bank announced in a statement on April 26 accompanying its April Commodity Markets Outlook report.

That range would still be the highest oil has been since 2012, the last time fossil fuel companies reported such high profits. And while oil prices should stay high, major oil companies are selling another highly-valuable commodity this year: natural gas.

Demand is spiking for natural gas, especially for its liquid form (LNG), which can be frozen and shipped worldwide without the need for pipelines, as countries scramble to replace missing Russian gas imports. And the same companies that have been profiting off of high oil prices could soon begin profiting from the LNG boom.

Shell is the world’s largest LNG trader, operating over 40 carriers around the world. Chevron is another major LNG player, managing nearly 150 terminals around the world to either freeze natural gas or regasify LNG. Chevron also has large stakes in some of the biggest LNG development plans in the world, such as the Gorgon Project in Australia.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com   

Shell: record profit makes life no easier for oil producer

May 5, 2022


It was a week of firsts for Shell. A new chief financial officer, Sinead Gorman, presented her first set of hard numbers in its first-quarter results on Thursday. Those, too, set a precedent. The Anglo-Dutch oil company boasted its best-ever ebitda result in that period, and the top quarterly out-turn since June 2008.

She must help her boss Ben van Beurden perform a tricky balancing act. Shareholders hunger for payouts while some politicians hope to divert surfeit cash flow towards other perceived societal priorities.

Certainly, Shell gushes profit from every unit, including its downstream products division, which included a strong trading result. This business’s $2bn of ebitda gets credit for the group’s pleasant earnings surprise.

Adjust its earnings for various write-offs, including those for its abandoned Russian operations, and the oil major had returns on average capital employed of more than 10 per cent, well above its cost of capital. All this for 3.4 times (including net debt) its estimated ebitda.

BP, too, had excellent quarterly results this week. And so, some in Westminster howl for windfall taxes. Lex generally opposes these as investment hindrances. But arguing that any such tax would curb production of oil and gas makes it sound like a carbon tax.

That is not so far from the oil producer’s thinking process. Shell already weighs down any prospective project’s internal rate of return with carbon costs. It may well have its own global internal estimate, but says it varies by country. That must be rising if Europe’s emissions trading system is anything to go by. Its carbon price topped €91 per tonne this week, up 82 per cent over 12 months. The new UK contract trades at a similar value.

Just tipping its overflowing free cash flow coffers into the pockets of Shell shareholders via increased buybacks is hard for UK ministers to defend. A hint of better than expected payouts later in the year helped boost the share price 4 per cent on the day, first among its peers. Yet a Janus-like approach by US and European governments to the energy sector — harangued over both climate change and supply shortfalls — only encourages inertia.

Eventually, worries about economic recession should temper commodity prices and any fury over Big Oil’s profits. No wonder investors are greedy for all they can get this year.

Source: Financial Times

Conoco posts a five-fold profit leap, raises shareholder returns



By Sabrina Valle and Rithika Krishna

Thu, May 5, 2022, 

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. oil producer ConocoPhillips on Thursday reported a first-quarter profit that jumped five-fold and exceeded Wall Street estimates on higher energy prices and volumes.

Conoco pledged to bump up shareholder returns by 25% to $10 billion this year but gave a weaker-than-expected outlook for full-year production while raising project spending.

Still, its year-over-year profit gain outshone that of rivals Exxon Mobil Corp, BP Plc and TotalEnergies thanks to the absence of Russia writedowns and a primary focus on crude and gas production instead of fuels or renewable energy sources.

"We see demand continuing to grow over the next couple of years," Chief Executive Ryan Lance told analysts, adding oil prices are "going to be probably above $90 a barrel" for the year.

Major oil producers in recent years have faced investor pressures to shift from fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions, and more recently to pump more oil to reduce fuel prices for consumers.

Shares were down 0.5% at $103.36 on Thursday afternoon with analysts raising concerns about Conoco's 8% increase in the year's capital spending budget.

Results "will be viewed as fairly neutral," RBC Capital Markets analysts Scott Hanold and Davis Petros said in a note.

The Houston-based company's adjusted earnings leapt to $4.29 billion, or $3.27 per share in the first quarter, from $902 million, or 69 cents per share a year earlier, beating Wall Street estimates of $3.03 per share, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Its oil and gas fetched $76.99 per barrel, 70% higher than in the first quarter of 2021, reflecting crude's jump above $100 per barrel this year on rising demand and supply worries over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Output rose about 15% in the quarter to 1.75 million bpd of oil and gas from a year earlier on a large acquisition of Shell Plc's shale holdings. But excluding Shell's assets, production fell in the quarter.

The company also expects a sequential decrease in second- quarter output, to between 1.67 million-1.73 million bpd.

Conoco raised its capital spending budget to $7.8 billion from previous guidance of $7.2 billion. Rising cash flow will help accelerate debt reduction, it said.

While the company has committed to making its operations generate net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it has rejected broader, Scope 3 targets, in which emissions from use of its fuels are counted.

"Should you hold a company like ConocoPhillips responsible for a consumer's decision to buy a pickup truck versus a Toyota Prius?" Lance asked. "The problematic piece has always been the Scope 3 because of the double counting."

(Reporting by Sabrina Valle in Houston and Rithika Krishna and Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Barbara Lewis, Bernadette Baum and Matthew Lewis)

Ballerina statue cut down in Tulsa, sold for scrap metal

Mon, May 2, 2022

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — A bronze statue depicting one of Oklahoma's most famous Native American ballerinas was cut from its base outside a Tulsa museum and sold for scrap to a recycling company, authorities said Monday.

Museum officials say the Five Moons statue of Marjorie Tallchief was likely removed Thursday from its plinth outside the Tulsa Historical Society, the Tulsa World reported.

Museum officials received a call Monday from CMC Recycling in southwest Rogers County to identify what was believed to be pieces of the bronze statue, the newspaper reported.

Michelle Place, director of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, checked out the recovered pieces late Monday morning and verified that they came from the statue.

“The Tulsa Police Department is working diligently to apprehend the thief,” the historical society said in a statement.

Pieces of the statute, including the head and part of an arm, are still missing.

Place said the original mold for the statue burned in a foundry fire, so recreating the statute will be much more complicated.

“I am devastated by this,” she said.

The statues known as the Five Moons were created by Tulsa-area artists Monte England and Gary Henson. England worked on two of the pieces before his death in 2005, and Henson completed the project.

The other Five Moons statues of renowned American Indian ballerinas depict Yvonne Chouteau, Rosella Hightower, Moscelyne Larkin and Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief's sister.

Pee on Your Veggies

Lillian Stone
Thu, May 5, 2022, 

Photo: WindAwake (Shutterstock)

Industrial agriculture has a fertilizer problem. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are an ecological disaster waiting to happen, emitting potent greenhouse gases and slipping into waterways. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing a global fertilizer shortage. It’s time to rethink the way we grow our food—and some researchers say that pee is the answer. Yeah, man. Human pee.

Why urine makes great fertilizer

In an AFP report published earlier this week, researchers discussed how human urine could “reduce reliance on chemicals and cut environmental pollution” in the agricultural realm. This isn’t anything new; agricultural experts around the world have a long history of using human waste as fertilizer. That’s because whiz is full of plants’ favorite nutrients—namely nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which we naturally excrete when we hit the can. In fact, AFP cites one UN study which found that global wastewater has the “theoretical potential to offset 13% of the world’s demand for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in agriculture.”

What’s stopping Big Ag from using Big Pee?

There are a few roadblocks preventing widespread adoption of urine as fertilizer. First: how does one collect all that pee? AFP reports that a urine-centric agriculture system would have to involve overhauling the sewage system, perhaps even using fancy urine-diverting toilets that funnel urine into separate containers. Similar endeavors are underway in countries including Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, the U.S., and France, AFP notes—but then there’s the PR of it all. The Pee Relations, if you will.

The big question is this: Are consumers ready to dive into a new, urine-soaked agricultural reality? Yes and no. Per AFP, the “acceptance rate” is very high in countries including China, France, and Uganda for example, but remains quite low in others. Personally, I’d take a pee potato over an artificially-fertilized potato any day. I’m ready to eat, drink, and pee merry.

IN THE NEW NETFLICKS SERIES FROM SPAIN; HEIRS OF THE EARTH, URINE IS USED FOR FERTILIZING GRAPES IN JEWISH VINEYARD IN THE 14TH CENTURY

There's a reason why aliens haven’t visited Earth yet, say scientists


Sarah Knapton
Tue, May 3, 2022,

Satellite over Earth - Michael Dunning/The Image Bank RF

The Fermi paradox questions why aliens have never visited Earth despite the Universe being so old and so vast that races should have evolved interstellar travel and come calling by now.

Now two scientists believe they may have the answer.

Astrobiologists Dr Michael Wong, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, and Dr Stuart Bartlett, of California Institute of Technology, have hypothesised that civilisations burn out when they grow too large and technical.

Faced with an ever-growing population and eye-watering energy consumption, worlds hit a crisis point known as a "singularity" where innovation can no longer keep up with demand.

The only alternative to collapse is to abandon "unyielding growth" and adopt a balance that allows survival but prevents the society moving any further forward, or venturing far from its own spot in the universe.

Writing in the Royal Society Open Science, Dr Wong and Dr Bartlett said: “We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilisations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritising homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely.

“Either outcome — homeostatic awakening or civilisation collapse — would be consistent with the observed absence of (galactic-wide) civilisations.”
Large civilisations reach crisis points

The pair argue that the general principles of life are universal and that although the emergence and evolution of life on other planets remains speculative, it may be inevitable.

Once on the path, life is likely to follow a similar trajectory to the civilisations of Earth, they claim, eventually organising into a globally connected state, with technology that needs increasing amounts of energy to maintain growth.

Using city growth equations, which sets limits on how far societies can scale up, the experts show how large civilisations eventually hit crisis points, which, once recognised, causes a halt in further growth.

The pair point to similar ‘mini-awakenings’ on Earth which have prevented global crises, such as the de-escalation of weapons of mass destruction since the Cold War, and the ban on Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to mend the hole in the ozone layer.

However alien civilisations which are close to burnout may be the most easy to detect, according to the research, because they would be using energy in a ‘wildly sustainable manner’ which would provide a good signal emanating from their world.

“This presents the possibility that a good many of humanity’s initial detections of extraterrestrial life may be of the intelligent, though not yet wise, kind,” they conclude.
Previous explanations

Previous suggestions for why intelligent aliens have not already visited Earth, include the discovery of a physical difficulty which makes space travel infeasible, whether related to astronomy, biology or engineering.

Some scientists have suggested that aliens have simply never chosen to visit us, or if they have we have not noticed, perhaps arriving before humans had evolved.

It is also possible that advanced civilisations arose too recently, and too far away, for aliens to have reached us yet.

In 2015, scientists analysing data from the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes concluded that around 92 per cent of potentially habitable worlds did not exist when Earth formed, so it may be that our Solar System is simply ahead of the game.