The Okanagan Never Has Been, And Never Will Be, Silicon Valley: A Lesson From New Zealand

UPDATE: This post from February 21, 2016, is being republished in the light of the announcement that Club Penguin is closing its doors in March. No amount of PR spin, arm waving, or equivocation can make the bitter truth of this post go away.  I note that Lane Merrifeld and Accelerate Okanagan have been conspicuously silent.  Before that, it was Silicon Valley company Packeteer, that morphed into Vineyard Networks when Packeteer pulled the plug and was eventually “parked” with Procera in Silicon Valley, which benefited very few in the Okanagan.  There is a long legacy of this that need not continue.

Kelowna Innovation Centre

British Columbia and New Zealand share many economic similarities, except that New Zealand has way more sheep, is way better at rugby and has much better sailors.  Both economies are focused on natural resource exploitation, tourism, wine, and horticulture. The motion picture industry has been a major factor in both economies, but both are highly vulnerable to foreign exchange fluctuations. Both economies have similar populations though we have more space and are not isolated in the South Pacific.   Both economies have made efforts to diversify into high tech, pouring millions into development of startups. Both economies have had modestly successful companies in high tech, which seemingly have mostly been bought out, moved out and any benefit to the local economy lost.  The crucial difference may be New Zealand’s pragmatism about how to deal with this economic reality.  British Columbia could learn from New Zealand.

Andy Hamilton, the long-time Director of Auckland, New Zealand’s Ice House high-tech incubator shared the following article from New Zealand’s NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW.  I first met Andy when I headed up New Zealand’s “Beachhead” incubator facility in Silicon Valley some years ago. The article has significant relevance to our situation in the Okanagan and British Columbia as a whole.  The Okanagan has seen high-profile startups like Club Penguin, Vineyard Networks, and Immersive Media bought by much larger foreign buyers, essentially leaving little benefit to the local economy. The founder of perhaps the most successful startup in BC, Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite, admitted that he did not base the company in the Okanagan (he is from Vernon) because he knew he could not attract the necessary talent here. It is well-known that many if not most UBC Okanagan graduates do not stay here.  While Vancouver has D-Wave and General Fusion, it has also seen Recon Instruments bought by Intel.  New Zealand has dealt with the same reality.  Forget the names of the Kiwi companies in the following editorial piece and substitute any Okanagan or BC startup company you feel is comparable. With Kelowna now tarred with the reputation as the worst job market in Canada, it would serve the local Okanagan establishment to give serious thought to the editorial below.

New Zealand: We’re not, and never will be, Silicon Valley

NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW (NEW ZEALAND)

MONDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2016

OPINION

BEN KEPES

New Zealand’s Diligent Corporation chief executive Brian Stafford

John Donne famously wrote that no man is an island entire of itself. The same is true for countries, and especially those countries situated in the middle of nowhere and with a relatively tiny population. At the same time, the old adage of not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater springs to mind.

All this mixing of metaphors seems timely given the current debate over Diligent Corporation [NZX: DIL] and its likely sale and exit from New Zealand. People on one side of the debate bemoan foreign sales and suggest this is why we should stick to our primary production knitting. Those on the other side suggest  offshore sales are fine since the money reenters into the economy via the oft-quoted “rinse and repeat” cycle.

To be honest, both sides simplify things with their arguments and I think it’s time for New Zealand to think a bit more deeply about what we want our economy to look like.

We’re not, and never will be, Silicon Valley.

It frustrates me when people glibly suggest that New Zealand should create a mini-Silicon Valley down here in the South Pacific. Silicon Valley only exists in one place and is a unique creation of a number of factors including a university that was founded on the idea of entrepreneurship. Leland Stanford created the university as a memorial to his 15-year-old son who died of typhoid. The university was to be co-educational (a rare thing at that time) and, above all, designed to produce practical members of society. This wasn’t about research for research’s sake, Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, wanted to produce research which was focused on commercial possibilities.

Add to that a hub of military research, significant funding streams for startups, a cultural focus on technology generally, and entrepreneurship specifically, and you have a unique place. Silicon Valley the product is very much a product of the crucible of Silicon Valley the place. We’d be advised to remember this.

But there are more reasons beyond viability to not want to recreate Silicon Valley in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. I’m lucky enough to spend a huge amount of time in “The Valley” and while I’d be the first to suggest that it is an exciting and bustling place, I’d also hate to live there. Unaffordable housing that makes Auckland look easy by comparison, ridiculous traffic issues (don’t even bother trying to drive the 101 on a weekday). A slightly weird culture in which 20-year-old entrepreneurs trying to reinvent laundry services or lawn care are seen as more heroic than doctors, firefighters or teachers.

Silicon Valley has something of a culture of “viva la revolution”. Ride-sharing service Uber’s founder, Travis Kalanick, is almost religious in his fervor for making transportation undergo a rapid revolution. Ultimately, he sees drivers as an impediment to this and is actively investing in driverless car technology in an effort to get rid of the very individuals who are currently making his service viable.

Perhaps this is the very reason that we shouldn’t try and recreate Silicon Valley in New Zealand. We have a society that, to some extent, at least, looks out for everyone. We were the first country in the world to give women the vote. We have a social welfare system that provides a safety net for people. When we’re sick in New Zealand we take it for granted that (hospital waiting lists notwithstanding) we’ll get treatment. The Silicon Valley focus on “automation and efficiency above all” forgoes all of this and, while creating a society where we can get our floors vacuumed by robots, our lawns mown as-a-service and even our meals prepared with synthetic meat by robot chefs, also helps create a dystopian world where anyone who isn’t a computer programmer, a robot engineer or independently wealthy falls by the wayside as an “unfortunate side effect of productivity enhancing tools and technological change.”

A final note on this point. Rod Drury, the chief executive of Xero [NZX: XRO], famously chooses to live in Hawke’s Bay where he can enjoy all that the region has to offer. Rod has seized this idea of balance in his working life and has found a way to build a business while not forgoing all possible quality of life. Indeed, this is a theme that Xero has used often when trying to attract talent. Let’s never forget these aspects in the desire to create GDP growth.

Do these technology exits really feed our economy?

All of this talk of quick technology exits funding lots of $100,000 plus software developer jobs here in New Zealand is a nice sound-bite but it arrogantly sidesteps the questions about what all those people who are left disenfranchised by those technologies are going to do. While TradeMe’s exit certainly helped to create companies like Vend, we need to be thinking, as a nation, about what is going to happen to all of those people who actually do things – tradespeople, manufacturing staff etc – once this ultimate in globalized efficiency is achieved.

If we look at the money that has been brought back to New Zealand from the sale of companies like TradeMe, how much has really gone into the economy? Yes, I’m well aware that TradeMe money has gone on to fund Vend, Xero, SLI Systems and a host of other companies. But while these are all interesting companies, doing good things and with (hopefully) a chance of a good outcome, they’re not particularly big employers and hence I’d be keen to see some empirical data about how much the so-called “trickle down effect” from exits like TradeMe actually exists.

True, both Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson have built big houses that have kept a few tradesmen busy for a while – it would be helpful for some independent economists to really nut out the continuing value from this model. Often this argument is one which is had from a perspective of dogma – we need to really get some clarity as to the economic impacts of the technology industry in New Zealand.

Notwithstanding the economic benefits of these offshore sales, or otherwise, the fact is there is little option for our technology companies. Again, in this respect, Xero remaining, at least to some extent a New Zealand company is very much an outlier.

This talk of the problems caused by companies like Navman, The Hyperfactory, and NextWindow, that have grown, been sold offshore and all the jobs (along with the tax revenue) lost to NZ Inc is simplistic as well. We live in a tiny market, one which makes a domestic focus pretty much impossible for all but the most niche of players. To achieve growth, these companies need to look to customers overseas. In this technology space, the norm is very much to follow a rapid merger and acquisition path.

The very model of the technology industry is for there to exist a myriad of startups, all of whom sprint in order to get ahead of the others. The prize for being at the front of the bunch is generally (with only a handful of exceptions) a quick acquisition by one of the titans of the industry. After which, and other than a general couple of years spent in purgatory working for said vendor, the founders head back and do it all again. Hopefully.

Is there a third way?

Now I’m not suggesting that we shroud ourselves in an isolationist mist. The last person to do that was Robert Muldoon and it was a disaster. But to suggest, as many do, that technology will replace the need for any of our traditional businesses is simplistic. Similarly, the view that it is best to follow these models of building fast-growth software companies to be quickly flicked off to the highest bidder is unhelpful.

So maybe there is a third way. Maybe we can look at what we naturally do well – things like growing grass and turning it into milk and meat, horticulture and agriculture generally, and the technologies that help those industries to be more efficient, ideas that need a unique combination of practicality and DIY-mentality (Gallagher’s fences anyone?) – and apply technology to those things. With the utmost respect to Xero, a company that is a terrific success story for New Zealand, there is nothing about accounting software that we fundamentally have a point of difference with. Xero could have been created out of Bangalore, Silicon Valley or London. The fact that it has been successful out of New Zealand is down to good luck, good timing and some unique factors. Xero is an outlier – a great one – but an outlier nonetheless. It would be a dangerous bet to make to assume that we can create enough Xeros to fund our big, expensive economy.

Ever greater extension of dairy farming isn’t, of course, an option. Our rivers and lakes are already enough of an abomination without more nitrate runoff. But how about celebrating those companies that are attempting to add value to primary production – Lewis Road Creamery is one that springs to mind. But there is a host of exciting new startups in the agricultural technology space as well.

We need a diverse economy, one in which we have small companies making added-value products alongside companies that will grow rapidly and be sold off. If I look at the companies I’m involved with, I certainly invest in the “high-growth and sell offshore” model. Appsecute, a company I was an early backer of, sold a couple of years ago to a Canadian company which, in turn, sold to Hewlett-Packard last year. Companies like MEA mobile, Raygun, ThisData and Wipster will, potentially, follow this model. But other technology companies have a domestic focus or one which favors remaining independent and growing from New Zealand – PropertyPlot, CommonLedger, and Publons are examples. And finally, companies that are involved in real physical products. While it may be totally unsexy to actually make anything in New Zealand anymore, I’m proud to be involved in Cactus Equipment, a company that not only makes awesome products but keeps scores of people employed here in New Zealand – people who are unlikely to become software developers any time soon.

Focus on a diverse NZ Inc

When Sam Morgan suggested that a focus on NZ Inc was unhelpful for companies and would get them killed, he was referring to technology companies specifically. I believe that, as an economy, we should look more broadly at what we do and celebrate both the meteoric risers of the industry, but also the bit players – those who aren’t gunning for a US exit, those who are able to make a living in the traditional economy and those who are trying to add extra value to what we do well.

Christchurch entrepreneur and cloud computing commentator Ben Kepes blogs at Diversity.net.nz.

Want to listen to the day’s hottest stories, plus interviews and panel discussions? Stream NBR Radio’s latest free 40-minute podcast from iHeartRadio, TuneIn, or iTunes.

Read more from Ben Kepes

Email Ben: ben@diversity.net.nz

Joseph Stiglitz Resigns As Panamanian Government Advisor on Panama Papers Scandal

Panama Papers: Joseph Stiglitz quits as Panamanian Govt adviser

• From BBC News, August 5, 2016

 

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz is one of two advisers to Panama’s government who have stood down

Stiglitz and Swiss Expert, Mark Peith Both Resign From Panamanian Government Investigation

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has quit an advisory panel to Panama’s government set up after the Panama Papers scandal.

Some 11.5m documents, leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed huge offshore tax evasion.

The government appointed a panel to look at Panama’s financial practices.

But Mr Stiglitz and and Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth, who also quit, said government interference in their work amounted to “censorship”.

The seven-person panel also included Panamanian experts.

“I thought the government was more committed, but obviously they’re not,” Mr Stiglitz told Reuters news agency. “It’s amazing how they tried to undermine us.”

A statement by Panama’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “the Panamanian government understands both resignations and internal differences”, adding that it maintains a “real commitment to transparency and international co-operation”.

The ministry said it had already acted on some recommendations made in the panel’s preliminary report and was considering others, without specifying which measures had been taken.

But a statement by Mr Stiglitz and Mr Spieth to Reuters said they were concerned that the panel’s final report would not be published.

“We can only infer that the government is facing pressure from those who are making profits from the current non-transparent financial system in Panama,” Mr Stiglitz said.

The Panama Papers were investigated for months by hundreds of investigative journalists, including staff from the BBC.

The documents, which were first detailed in April, revealed the hidden assets of hundreds of politicians, officials, current and former national leaders, celebrities and sports stars.

They list more than 200,000 shell companies, foundations and trusts set up in tax havens around the world.

Mossack Fonseca said it had been hacked by servers based abroad and filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general’s office.

The company said it did not act illegally and that information was being misrepresented.

---

The Okanagan Never Has Been, And Never Will Be, Silicon Valley: A Lesson From New Zealand

Kelowna Innovation Centre

British Columbia and New Zealand share many economic similarities, except that New Zealand has way more sheep, is way better at rugby and has much better sailors.  Both economies are focused on natural resource exploitation, tourism, wine, and horticulture.  The motion picture industry has been a major factor in both economies, but both are highly vulnerable to foreign exchange fluctuations. Both economies have similar populations though we have more space and are not isolated in the South Pacific.  Both economies have made efforts to diversify into high tech, pouring millions into development of startups. Both economies have had modestly successful companies in high tech, which seemingly have mostly been bought out, moved out and any benefit to the local economy lost.  The crucial difference may be New Zealand’s pragmatism about how to deal with this economic reality.  British Columbia could learn from New Zealand.

Andy Hamilton, the long-time Director of Auckland, New Zealand’s Ice House high-tech incubator shared the following article from New Zealand’s NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW.  I first met Andy when I headed up New Zealand’s “Beachhead” incubator facility in Silicon Valley some years ago. The article has significant relevance to our situation in the Okanagan and British Columbia as a whole.  The Okanagan has seen high-profile startups like Club Penguin, Vineyard Networks, and Immersive Media bought by much larger foreign buyers, essentially leaving little benefit to the local economy. The founder of perhaps the most successful startup in BC, Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite, admitted that he did not base the company in the Okanagan (he is from Vernon) because he knew he could not attract the necessary talent here. It is well-known that many if not most UBC Okanagan graduates do not stay here.  While Vancouver has D-Wave and General Fusion, it has also seen Recon Instruments bought by Intel.  New Zealand has dealt with the same reality.  Forget the names of the Kiwi companies in the following editorial piece and substitute any Okanagan or BC startup company you feel is comparable. With Kelowna now tarred with the reputation as the worst job market in Canada, it would serve the local Okanagan establishment to give serious thought to the editorial below.

New Zealand: We’re not, and never will be, Silicon Valley

NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW (NEW ZEALAND)

MONDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2016

OPINION

BEN KEPES

New Zealand’s Diligent Corporation chief executive Brian Stafford

John Donne famously wrote that no man is an island entire of itself. The same is true for countries, and especially those countries situated in the middle of nowhere and with a relatively tiny population. At the same time, the old adage of not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater springs to mind.

All this mixing of metaphors seems timely given the current debate over Diligent Corporation [NZX: DIL] and its likely sale and exit from New Zealand. People on one side of the debate bemoan foreign sales and suggest this is why we should stick to our primary production knitting. Those on the other side suggest  offshore sales are fine since the money reenters into the economy via the oft-quoted “rinse and repeat” cycle.

To be honest, both sides simplify things with their arguments and I think it’s time for New Zealand to think a bit more deeply about what we want our economy to look like.

We’re not, and never will be, Silicon Valley.

It frustrates me when people glibly suggest that New Zealand should create a mini-Silicon Valley down here in the South Pacific. Silicon Valley only exists in one place and is a unique creation of a number of factors including a university that was founded on the idea of entrepreneurship. Leland Stanford created the university as a memorial to his 15-year-old son who died of typhoid. The university was to be co-educational (a rare thing at that time) and, above all, designed to produce practical members of society. This wasn’t about research for research’s sake, Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, wanted to produce research which was focused on commercial possibilities.

Add to that a hub of military research, significant funding streams for startups, a cultural focus on technology generally, and entrepreneurship specifically, and you have a unique place. Silicon Valley the product is very much a product of the crucible of Silicon Valley the place. We’d be advised to remember this.

But there are more reasons beyond viability to not want to recreate Silicon Valley in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. I’m lucky enough to spend a huge amount of time in “The Valley” and while I’d be the first to suggest that it is an exciting and bustling place, I’d also hate to live there. Unaffordable housing that makes Auckland look easy by comparison, ridiculous traffic issues (don’t even bother trying to drive the 101 on a weekday). A slightly weird culture in which 20-year-old entrepreneurs trying to reinvent laundry services or lawn care are seen as more heroic than doctors, firefighters or teachers.

Silicon Valley has something of a culture of “viva la revolution”. Ride-sharing service Uber’s founder, Travis Kalanick, is almost religious in his fervor for making transportation undergo a rapid revolution. Ultimately, he sees drivers as an impediment to this and is actively investing in driverless car technology in an effort to get rid of the very individuals who are currently making his service viable.

Perhaps this is the very reason that we shouldn’t try and recreate Silicon Valley in New Zealand. We have a society that, to some extent, at least, looks out for everyone. We were the first country in the world to give women the vote. We have a social welfare system that provides a safety net for people. When we’re sick in New Zealand we take it for granted that (hospital waiting lists notwithstanding) we’ll get treatment. The Silicon Valley focus on “automation and efficiency above all” forgoes all of this and, while creating a society where we can get our floors vacuumed by robots, our lawns mown as-a-service and even our meals prepared with synthetic meat by robot chefs, also helps create a dystopian world where anyone who isn’t a computer programmer, a robot engineer or independently wealthy falls by the wayside as an “unfortunate side effect of productivity enhancing tools and technological change.”

A final note on this point. Rod Drury, the chief executive of Xero [NZX: XRO], famously chooses to live in Hawke’s Bay where he can enjoy all that the region has to offer. Rod has seized this idea of balance in his working life and has found a way to build a business while not forgoing all possible quality of life. Indeed, this is a theme that Xero has used often when trying to attract talent. Let’s never forget these aspects in the desire to create GDP growth.

Do these technology exits really feed our economy?

All of this talk of quick technology exits funding lots of $100,000 plus software developer jobs here in New Zealand is a nice sound-bite but it arrogantly sidesteps the questions about what all those people who are left disenfranchised by those technologies are going to do. While TradeMe’s exit certainly helped to create companies like Vend, we need to be thinking, as a nation, about what is going to happen to all of those people who actually do things – tradespeople, manufacturing staff etc – once this ultimate in globalized efficiency is achieved.

If we look at the money that has been brought back to New Zealand from the sale of companies like TradeMe, how much has really gone into the economy? Yes, I’m well aware that TradeMe money has gone on to fund Vend, Xero, SLI Systems and a host of other companies. But while these are all interesting companies, doing good things and with (hopefully) a chance of a good outcome, they’re not particularly big employers and hence I’d be keen to see some empirical data about how much the so-called “trickle down effect” from exits like TradeMe actually exists.

True, both Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson have built big houses that have kept a few tradesmen busy for a while – it would be helpful for some independent economists to really nut out the continuing value from this model. Often this argument is one which is had from a perspective of dogma – we need to really get some clarity as to the economic impacts of the technology industry in New Zealand.

Notwithstanding the economic benefits of these offshore sales, or otherwise, the fact is there is little option for our technology companies. Again, in this respect, Xero remaining, at least to some extent a New Zealand company is very much an outlier.

This talk of the problems caused by companies like Navman, The Hyperfactory, and NextWindow, that have grown, been sold offshore and all the jobs (along with the tax revenue) lost to NZ Inc is simplistic as well. We live in a tiny market, one which makes a domestic focus pretty much impossible for all but the most niche of players. To achieve growth, these companies need to look to customers overseas. In this technology space, the norm is very much to follow a rapid merger and acquisition path.

The very model of the technology industry is for there to exist a myriad of startups, all of whom sprint in order to get ahead of the others. The prize for being at the front of the bunch is generally (with only a handful of exceptions) a quick acquisition by one of the titans of the industry. After which, and other than a general couple of years spent in purgatory working for said vendor, the founders head back and do it all again. Hopefully.

Is there a third way?

Now I’m not suggesting that we shroud ourselves in an isolationist mist. The last person to do that was Robert Muldoon and it was a disaster. But to suggest, as many do, that technology will replace the need for any of our traditional businesses is simplistic. Similarly, the view that it is best to follow these models of building fast-growth software companies to be quickly flicked off to the highest bidder is unhelpful.

So maybe there is a third way. Maybe we can look at what we naturally do well – things like growing grass and turning it into milk and meat, horticulture and agriculture generally, and the technologies that help those industries to be more efficient, ideas that need a unique combination of practicality and DIY-mentality (Gallagher’s fences anyone?) – and apply technology to those things. With the utmost respect to Xero, a company that is a terrific success story for New Zealand, there is nothing about accounting software that we fundamentally have a point of difference with. Xero could have been created out of Bangalore, Silicon Valley or London. The fact that it has been successful out of New Zealand is down to good luck, good timing and some unique factors. Xero is an outlier – a great one – but an outlier nonetheless. It would be a dangerous bet to make to assume that we can create enough Xeros to fund our big, expensive economy.

Ever greater extension of dairy farming isn’t, of course, an option. Our rivers and lakes are already enough of an abomination without more nitrate runoff. But how about celebrating those companies that are attempting to add value to primary production – Lewis Road Creamery is one that springs to mind. But there is a host of exciting new startups in the agricultural technology space as well.

We need a diverse economy, one in which we have small companies making added-value products alongside companies that will grow rapidly and be sold off. If I look at the companies I’m involved with, I certainly invest in the “high-growth and sell offshore” model. Appsecute, a company I was an early backer of, sold a couple of years ago to a Canadian company which, in turn, sold to Hewlett-Packard last year. Companies like MEA mobile, Raygun, ThisData and Wipster will, potentially, follow this model. But other technology companies have a domestic focus or one which favors remaining independent and growing from New Zealand – PropertyPlot, CommonLedger, and Publons are examples. And finally, companies that are involved in real physical products. While it may be totally unsexy to actually make anything in New Zealand anymore, I’m proud to be involved in Cactus Equipment, a company that not only makes awesome products but keeps scores of people employed here in New Zealand – people who are unlikely to become software developers any time soon.

Focus on a diverse NZ Inc

When Sam Morgan suggested that a focus on NZ Inc was unhelpful for companies and would get them killed, he was referring to technology companies specifically. I believe that, as an economy, we should look more broadly at what we do and celebrate both the meteoric risers of the industry, but also the bit players – those who aren’t gunning for a US exit, those who are able to make a living in the traditional economy and those who are trying to add extra value to what we do well.

Christchurch entrepreneur and cloud computing commentator Ben Kepes blogs at Diversity.net.nz.

Want to listen to the day’s hottest stories, plus interviews and panel discussions? Stream NBR Radio’s latest free 40-minute podcast from iHeartRadio, TuneIn, or iTunes.

Read more from Ben Kepes

Email Ben: ben@diversity.net.nz

OECD Slashes Canadian Economic Forecast Yet Again

One day after federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver deflected concerns over Canada’s poor economic showing to start 2015, the OECD announced that it now projects Canadian growth this year at about 1.5 percent, down sharply from 2.2 percent during its previous temperature reading in March and a full percentage point below its forecast last November. Oliver on Tuesday told a Parliamentary Committee that he does not anticipate a recession.

Carolyn Hyde of Bloomberg News discusses the revised OECD global economic forecast, and further negative impacts to the Canadian and U.S. economies

Today, June 3rd, the Paris-based body has also adjusted its timetable for the start of monetary tightening by the Bank of Canada to early-2016 from mid-2015.

Commenting on the main risk to even its reduced Canadian forecast, the OECD cites “a disorderly housing-market correction, particularly given high household debt, which would depress private consumption and residential investment and could, in the extreme, threaten financial stability.”

Other potential negatives for the Canadian economy range from a further fall in oil prices and slower than expected growth in the United States, to a sudden Chinese slowdown, which could translate into “a greater and more protracted than expected deceleration in activity, including weaker investment, exports and private consumption.”

Potential Canadian pluses include a recovery in oil demand and prices and higher than anticipated growth in the United States and other important export markets.

Royal Bank of Canada is more upbeat in a forecast also released today. The bank predicts a much better second half for the Canadian economy, with growth reaching 1.8 percent this year and 2.6 percent in 2016.

RBC acknowledges that investment will be weak for the rest of the year, as energy companies slash capital spending by about 30 percent. But the bank expects other sectors to pick up part of the slack, thanks to low financing costs and stronger demand.

But the OECD worries that investment everywhere will remain below the level of previous recoveries, partly because of weak consumer demand, continuing uncertainty about fiscal policies and a lack of structural reforms in several key economies.

“Despite tailwinds and policy actions, real investment has been tepid and productivity growth disappointing,” the OECD report says.

“By and large, firms have been unwilling to spend on plant, equipment, technology and services as vigorously as they have done in previous cyclical recoveries.

“Moreover, many governments postponed infrastructure investments as part of a fiscal consolidation.”

Iraq About To Flood Oil Market: More Grief Ahead For Canada

Underscoring Goldman Sachs forecast last week of oil prices at or below $50 per bbl until at least 2020, Bloomberg News is today reporting that Iraq is preparing to unleash a flood of new oil within the next few months.  This is very bad news for the price of Western Canadian Select bitumen, and Alberta oil sands producers.  Saudi Arabia’s strategy, together with OPEC, to squeeze high-cost oil producers of oil sands and shale seems to be working.  More pessimistic forecasts of WCS at $25 for an extended period now appear more plausible.  The complex interplay of oil and global economies could also have a reverberating effect on regions on the sharp edge of full-scale recession, including Canada, Europe, Russia and China.

Iraq About to Flood Oil Market in New Front of OPEC Price War
If shipping schedules are correct, a tidal wave of oil is coming.

BLOOMBERG NEWS by Grant SmithJulian Lee
7:37 AM PDT
May 26, 2015

(Bloomberg) — Iraq is taking OPEC’s strategy to defend its share of the global oil market to a new level.
The nation plans to boost crude exports by about 26 percent to a record 3.75 million barrels a day next month, according to shipping programs, signaling an escalation of OPEC strategy to undercut U.S. shale drillers in the current market rout. The additional Iraqi oil is equal to about 800,000 barrels a day, or more than comes from OPEC member Qatar. The rest of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to rubber stamp its policy to maintain output levels at a meeting on June 5. While shipping schedules aren’t a promise of future production, they are indicative of what may come. The following chart graphs planned tanker loadings (in red) against exports.

As in previous months, Iraq might not hit its June target – export capacity is currently capped at 3.1 million barrels a day, Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad al-Nimaa said on May 18. Still, any extra Iraqi supplies inevitably mean OPEC strays even further above its collective output target of 30 million barrels a day, Morgan Stanley says. The following chart shows OPEC increasing output in recent months against its current target.

Defying the threat from Islamic State militants, Iraq has been ramping up exports from both the Shiite south – where companies like BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc operate – and the Kurdish region in the north, which last year reached a temporary compromise with the federal government on its right to sell crude independently.

CNN Money: Canada’s Economy Is A Disaster From Low Oil Prices

The evidence of a Canadian economic train wreck just keep rolling in. This report from CNN Money mentions last week’s Bank of Canada dismal report on the Canadian economy, and goes on to add additional economic data and comment from respected investment banks around the World. The one glaring omission is any political discussion of how Canada got into this mess, and who is responsible for it.

Canada’s economy is a disaster from low oil prices

By Nick Cunningham for Oilprice.com @CNNMoneyInvest

Low oil prices are threatening the health of Canada’s oil and gas sector, which in turn, is causing turmoil in Canada’s economy as a whole.

The fall in oil prices is forcing billions of dollars in spending reductions for Canada’s oil and gas industry. In February, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) shelved plans for a tar sands project in Alberta that would have produced 200,000 barrels per day. Last year, Petronas put off plans to build a massive LNG export terminal on Canada’s west coast.

Moody’s recently predicted that very few of the 18 proposed LNG projects in Canada will be constructed. Most will be canceled. The oil industry is expected to lose 37% of its revenues in 2015, or a fall of CAD$43 billion.

That is bad news for Canada’s oil and gas sector. But even worse, Canada’s overdependence on oil and gas will threaten its broader economy now that the sector has gone bust.

The severe drop in oil prices has made the Canadian dollar one of the worst performing currencies in the world over the past year. The “loonie” used to trade at parity to the U.S. dollar, and even appreciated to a stronger level a few years ago, but now a Canadian dollar gets you less than 80 U.S. cents.

Disaster levels: While a weaker currency has complicating effects on the economy (it will also boost exports, for example), on balance low oil prices have been an unmitigated disaster for Canada’s economy.

Canada’s GDP “fell off a cliff” in January of this year, according to a report from Capital Economics, a consultancy. Canada’s economy could be shrinking by 1% on an annualized basis. For the full year, Capital Economics predicts growth of 1.5%, followed by a weak 1% expansion in 2016.

“Overall, unless oil prices rebound soon, the economy is likely to struggle much longer than the consensus view implies, even as the improving US economy supports stronger non-energy exports,” Capital Economics concluded. Other economic analysts agree.

Nomura Securities worries about “contagion,” as the collapse in oil prices lead to less drilling, declining demand for supporting services, falling housing prices, a sinking stock market, and weakness in other sectors like construction and engineering. The pain could be concentrated in Alberta in particular, where household debt averages CAD$124,838, compared to just CAD$76,150 for the rest of Canada. Now with the rug pulled out beneath the economy, there could be a day of reckoning.

High-cost oil: Much of Canada’s oil production comes from high-cost tar sands. When they are up and running, tar sands operations can produce relatively more stable outputs than shale, which suffers from rapid decline rates. But, nevertheless, tar sands are extremely costly, with breakeven prices at $60 to $80 per barrel for steam-assisted extraction and a whopping $90 to $100 per barrel for tar sands mining.
Even worse, Canada’s heavy oil trades at a discount to WTI, which makes it all the more painful when oil prices are low. The discount is nearly $12 per barrel below WTI right now. Some of that discount is the result of inadequate pipeline capacity, trapping some tar sands in Canada. The stalled Keystone XL pipeline is the most controversial, but not the only pipeline that has been blocked. The head of Canada’s Scotiabank recently warned that the inability to build enough energy infrastructure, plus Canada’s near total dependence on the U.S. market, puts Canada’s economy at risk.

The Bank of Canada surveyed the top executives at Canada’s 100 largest businesses found that two-thirds of them think it is critical to diversify the economy away from oil. With such a dependence on commodities, the oil bust has rippled through the economy, forcing layoffs and increasing unemployment. Consumer confidence is low, and hiring is at its lowest level since 2009, during the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Of course, diversification can only be achieved over the longer-term. In the near-term Canada’s fate is tied to the price of oil.

Bank of Canada & OECD See Ever Widening Economic Impact of Oil Collapse

The Bank of Canada’s Spring 2015 Business Outlook Survey (link to complete report below) released this week, gives more reason for serious concern regarding the economic prospects for all Canada, and the widening impact of Canada’s “natural resource curse”: it’s fossil fuel based economy. The report points to a significant increase in business pessimism about the economy as a whole, well beyond the oil economy, which is causing business to significantly reduce plans for capital spending and hiring. As I pointed out previously, the impact of the oil economy collapse is likely to reverberate throughout the Okanagan. The BofC report suggests that the impacts will be even deeper and more diverse. The report also looks to greater macroeconomic impacts: longer term weakness and volatility of the loonie. With Canadian interest rates at an all time low there is even the prospect of deflation. The report’s optimistic expectations for some upside from a robust U.S. economy have vanished this week, with projections of zero growth in the U.S. economy in 2015.

Bank of Canada survey shows oil dimming business confidence

Read the complete Bank of Canada Report here: Business Outlook Survery – Spring 2015

Read about OECD Composite of Leading Indicators: OECD marks slowdown in Canada, even as other economies recover

Hiring intentions drop to lowest since 2009 in central bank’s quarterly scan of big companies

REBLOGGED from the CBC:  Pete Evans, CBC News Posted: Apr 06, 2015 11:46 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 06, 2015 9:29 PM ET

The Bank of Canada says cheaper oil prices are hurting sales forecasts and starting to hit confidence in industries far beyond the energy sector.

In its quarterly Business Outlook Survey, the central bank surveyed 100 representative companies across various Canadian industries and found that broadly speaking, cheaper oil has reduced sales expectations and cut into confidence in doing things like investing in new equipment and machinery, and possibly hiring new staff.

“More businesses than in previous surveys anticipate an outright decline in sales volumes,” the report said.

The survey interviewed business owners between the middle of February and the middle of March. The ongoing slump in oil prices had been underway for several months at that point, but it’s worth noting that Monday’s report is the first such survey since the central bank surprised markets with a rate cut at the end of January.

‘The oil price collapse is taking a toll’– TD Bank’s Leslie Preston

The survey “showed that firms are quite pessimistic about expanding their capacity over the next year,” TD economist Leslie Preston said. “The oil price collapse is taking a toll on Canada’s economy.”

The Bank of Canada’s quarterly survey suggests that gloom in the oil patch is starting to spread into different parts of the overall economy, potentially affecting hiring and purchases of new equipment. (Todd Korol/Reuters)

Although it remains in a range the bank calls “positive,” the outlook for hiring has dropped to its lowest level since 2009, when the world economy was in recession just about everywhere following the credit crisis.

Forty of the companies surveyed said they expect to hire more people in the next 12 months than they did in the previous 12. Another 40 said they expect to hire the same amount, with the remaining 20 saying they expect to hire less.

Good news?

If there’s a source of strength, it’s that the bank’s report suggests companies with strong ties to the U.S. economy are more upbeat. The U.S. is benefiting more from cheap oil than most economies, because it is the most diverse economy on earth and cheaper energy is good news for virtually every other sector.

“Firms’ outlook for the U.S. economy is generally strong, with the majority expecting this strength to support their future sales,” the report says. Cheaper oil has also hurt the loonie, which exporters to the U.S. cited as another reason for cautious optimism about sales from here on out.

Several firms reported foreign demand had increased thanks to the weakened Canadian dollar, but “while many firms outside the energy sector characterize the effects of lower oil prices and the weaker Canadian dollar as favourable for their business outlook, they expect some of the benefits to unfold only gradually in the future,” the report says.

Plummeting Oil Prices Set To Continue As Canada Cringes

 

 

Regrettably, this week’s events in the oil market, provide further evidence of the dire consequences ahead for the Canadian oil economy.  Oil industry bulls who have been betting on a quick rebound in oil prices are likely to get severely burned, and the prospects for the local tourism based economy are only worsening.

In the same week that local gasoline prices mysteriously spiked up nine cents per liter, blamed on the weakening Canadian dollar, and a refinery fire in Los Angeles (of all places), the Wall Street Journal reported that the global oil glut has consumed more than 80% of the available storage capacity. The WSJ report went on to state that with production levels still not likely to decline, oil supply would continue to grow well beyond demand, driving prices into another sharp decline, perhaps as low at CitiBank‘s forecast of $20 per bbl.   Now the International Energy Agency has corroborated the WSJ forecast with its own dire oil market forecast. Both do not see any early end in sight. Crude prices plunged Friday on this news, to below $45 per bbl.

 

Oil Prices Tumble After IEA Warning
Energy watchdog warns that recent rebound in prices may not last

REBLOGGED from the WSJ

By TIMOTHY PUKO And BENOÎT FAUCON
Updated March 13, 2015 5:09 p.m. ET

The benchmark U.S. oil price tumbled to a six-week low Friday, thwarting hopes for a sustained recovery after an influential energy watchdog said U.S. production growth is defying expectations and setting the stage for another bout of price weakness.

Investors and oil producers should brace for further declines in oil prices, the International Energy Agency said in a monthly report. Prices haven’t fallen far enough yet to cut supply, and some signs of rising demand are just temporary—bargain buyers using cheap oil to fill up stockpiles, the agency said.

That outlook weighed on sentiment in the oil-futures market, which has stabilized in recent weeks following a seven-month selloff that saw the benchmark price on the New York Mercantile Exchange plunge 59%. Behind the selloff, which by some measures was the steepest in decades, was a global glut of crude spurred by rising production in the U.S. and Libya.

“This IEA report today confirmed a lot of things bears had been talking about,” said Todd Garner, who manages $100 million in energy commodity investments at hedge fund Protec Energy Partners LLC based in Boca Raton, Fla. “It is a big deal.” His fund is slowly adding to a bet the growing supply will keep bringing down gasoline futures, he said.

The IEA’s report echoed growing concerns in the market that the amount of available oil storage is dwindling, which potentially could weigh further on prices if output continues unabated.

Many barrels are building up in U.S. storage tanks and behind drilled but idled wells. That overhang can flood the market any time prices rise, acting as a cap on prices, Mr. Garner and others said.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery fell $2.21, or 4.7%, to $44.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract closed within 40 cents of the 6-year low closing price of $44.45 a barrel set on Jan. 28.

Brent, the global benchmark, fell $2.41 a barrel, or 4.2%, to $54.67 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Both Brent and U.S. oil had their biggest one-day percentage losses in about two weeks.

Oil prices fell sharply Friday. Late last year, workers on a Texas drilling rig grappled with equipment.
Financial markets have been closely watching oil prices, which had recovered to more than $60 a barrel for Brent crude. Oil prices had traded in a fairly narrow range for about a month, raising the question of whether the market had stabilized after a historic collapse.

Rig counts, one closely watched metric, fell for a 14th straight week, Baker Hughes said Friday. The U.S. oil-rig count fell by 56 to 866 in the latest week.

That is down 46% from a peak of 1,609 in October, but hasn’t led to a commensurate cut in production because producers are still completing previously drilled wells and focusing on the highest producing areas to trim costs. Rig counts in the country’s biggest three shale oil fields, the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian, haven’t fallen nearly as fast, according to Citigroup Inc.

Today’s oil industry compares to the natural-gas bust of 2011 and 2012 when a dramatic price collapse led to massive cuts in rig activity, but no slowdown production, the bank said in a note this week. Producers got more efficient and left a backlog of wells to connect later. Prices fell by half and took more than a year to fully rebound. Citi expects U.S. oil production this year to grow by 700,000 barrels in 2015 under almost any scenario, it said.

“If you don’t complete wells now, that just means you have more later,” Citi analyst Anthony Yuen said. “When the price is supposed to get high, it will just get dampened” when the uncompleted wells get tapped.

The IEA said U.S. oil production was up 115,000 barrels a day in February, some of it going into bulging storage inventories whose capacity may soon be tested. “That would inevitably lead to renewed price weakness,” the report said. The IEA called the appearance of stability a “facade.”

“Production’s through the roof,” said Tim Rudderow, who oversees $1.6 billion at Mount Lucas Management in suburban Philadelphia. “You’re going to fill up every jar and bottle from here to Europe.”

As oil prices consolidated in recent weeks, Mr. Rudderow bought options that would pay off if June futures fell back to a range between $43 and $50 a barrel, he said. He has about 15% of a $600 million fund on oil bets and might add to it if oil keeps falling, potentially setting off a panic, he added.

Another oil-market contraction could spell good news for motorists, who had begun feeling rising crude prices in higher costs at the pump in the past two months. The average retail cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $2.49 this week, compared with $2.04 on Jan. 26, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Front-month gasoline futures closed down 2.6% to $1.7623 a gallon. Diesel futures closed down 3.7% to $1.7130 a gallon.

Others on Friday echoed the IEA’s view, saying that, in the short term, the oil market is fundamentally weak. “U.S. production growth has not yet slowed enough to balance the oil market,” Goldman Sachs said in a note to investors.

Investors did take heed in the week ended Tuesday, pulling back on a bullish bet on oil prices, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Hedge funds, pension funds and others added to their short positions, or bets on lower prices, by 4,763 and added to their long positions, or bets on rising prices, by just 731. It pulled back the net bullish position by 2.5% to 160,278.

Preparing For The Long Term Consequences In Texas And Western Canada

UPDATE: January 20, 2015. Target announced this week that it will be closing all 133 stores in Canada, including the Vernon and Kelowna stores. eliminating at least a couple of hundred local $10/hr jobs and a handful of slightly better paid management jobs. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Target’s 17,000 + Canadian layoffs of low income workers will be the largest in Canadian history.

OPEC Report Downgrades Demand for Its Oil as Prices Fall Again

The growing downturn in the fossil fuels industry has extraordinary implications globally.  While some are proposing theories that this downturn will be short-lived, there simply isn’t much evidence to support an optimistic forecast.  Saudi Arabia is openly executing a long term strategy to squeeze “high cost oil producers,” using its unquestioned leverage and the lowest production costs in the World.  Europe is facing potential deflation, and the current European recession is forcing the European Central Bank to begin “quantitative easing,” beginning this week, essentially printing money.  The Russian economy is in shambles as the ruble weakens, something Putin did not plan on occurring.  The Chinese economy has weakened sharply and will likely remain weak into the near foreseeable future. Meanwhile Canada is at the mercy of these global forces, with little in the way of economic reserves to defend its economy, having bet the entire Canadian economy on oil. Somehow Joe Oliver promised he would balance the Canadian budget in 2015, and then the next day, Oliver ate crow, and walked back his promise.  In a surprise move, The Bank of Canada then reduced the lending rate to 0.75%, causing the loonie to plummet below 81 cents. Things are not what the government wants us to believe.

There are significant hedge bets in the market that oil will soon return to $100 per barrel. A prominent optimistic theory suggests that Saudi Arabia and the United States are collaborating to squeeze Putin and the Russian oil economy, and oil will bounce back within 90 days. However, most economists and oil industry analysts are projecting a much longer and deeper petroleum industry recession than in the 1980’s, for example.  The predominant view is that it will persist for at least five years or longer.

In Texas, Hunkering Down for the Oil Bust

Reblogged from The New York Times

By CLIFFORD KRAUSSJAN. 19, 2015

MIDLAND, Tex. — With oil prices plummetingby more than 50 percent since June, the gleeful mood of recent years has turned glum here in West Texas as the frenzy of shale oil drilling has come to a screeching halt.

Every day, oil companies are decommissioning rigs and announcing layoffs. Small firms that lease equipment have fallen behind in their payments.

In response, businesses and workers are getting ready for the worst. A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And people are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners.

Dexter Allred, the general manager of a local oil field service company, began farming alfalfa hay on the side some years ago in the event that oil prices declined and work dried up. He was taking a cue from his grandfather, Homer Alf Swinson, an oil field mechanic, who opened a coin-operated carwash in 1968 — just in case.

Photo

Homer Alf Swinson, left, an oil field mechanic, opened a coin-operated carwash in 1968 — just in case oil prices declined. CreditMichael Stravato for The New York Times

“We all have backup plans,” Mr. Allred said with laugh. “You can be sure oil will go up and down, the only question is when.”

Indeed, to residents here in the heart of the oil patch, booms and busts go with the territory.

“This is Midland and it’s just a way of life,” said David Cristiani, owner of a downtown jewelry store, who keeps a graph charting oil prices since the late 1990s on his desk to remind him that the good times don’t last forever. “We are always prepared for slowdowns. We just hunker down. They wrote off the Permian Basin in 1984, but the oil will always be here.”

It’s at times like these that Midland residents recall the wild swings of the 1980s, a decade that began with parties where people drank Dom Pérignon out of their cowboy boots. Rolls-Royce opened a dealership, and the local airport had trouble finding space to park all the private jets. By the end of the decade, the Rolls-Royce dealership was shut and replaced by a tortilla factory, and three banks had failed.

There has been nothing like that kind of excess over the past five years, despite the frenzy of drilling across the Permian Basin, the granddaddy of American oil fields. Set in a forsaken desert where tumbleweed drifts through long-forgotten towns, the region has undergone a renaissance in the last four years, with horizontal drilling and fracking reaching through multiple layers of shales stacked one over the other like a birthday cake.

But since the Permian Basin rig count peaked at around 570 last September, it has fallen to below 490 and local oil executives say the count will probably go down to as low as 300 by April unless prices rebound. The last time the rig count declined as rapidly was in late 2008 and early 2009, when the price of oil fell from over $140 to under $40 a barrel because of the financial crisis.

Unlike traditional oil wells, which cannot be turned on and off so easily, shale production can be cut back quickly, and so the field’s output should slow considerably by the end of the year.

The Dallas Federal Reserve recently estimated that the falling oil prices and other factors will reduce job growth in Texas overall from 3.6 percent in 2014 to as low as 2 percent this year, or a reduction of about 149,000 in jobs created.

Midland’s recent good fortune is plain to see. The city has grown in population from 108,000 in 2010 to 140,000 today, and there has been an explosion of hotel and apartment construction. Companies like Chevron and Occidental are building new local headquarters. Real estate values have roughly doubled over the past five years, according to Mayor Jerry Morales.

The city has built a new fire station and recruited new police officers with the infusion of new tax receipts, which increased by 19 percent from 2013 to 2014 alone. A new $14 million court building is scheduled to break ground next month. But the city has also put away $39 million in a rainy-day fund for the inevitable oil bust.

“This is just a cooling-off period,” Mayor Morales said. “We will prevail again.”

Expensive restaurants are still full and traffic around the city can be brutal. Still, everyone seems to sense that the pain is coming, and they are preparing for it.

Randy Perry, who makes $115,000 a year, plus bonuses, managing the rig crews at Elevation Resources, said he always has a backup plan.

“We are responding to survive, so that we may once again thrive when we come out the other side,” said Steven H. Pruett, president and chief executive of Elevation Resources, a Midland-based oil exploration and production company. “Six months ago there was a swagger in Midland and now that swagger is gone.”

Mr. Pruett’s company had six rigs running in early December but now has only three. It will go down to one by the end of the month, even though he must continue to pay a service company for two of the rigs because of a long-term contract.

The other day Mr. Pruett drove to a rig outside of Odessa he feels compelled to park to save cash, and he expressed concern that as many as 50 service workers could eventually lose their jobs.

But the workers themselves seemed stoic about their fortunes, if not upbeat.

“It’s always in the back of your mind — being laid off and not having the security of a regular job,” said Randy Perry, a tool-pusher who makes $115,000 a year, plus bonuses, managing the rig crews. But Mr. Perry said he always has a backup plan because layoffs are so common; even inevitable.

Since graduating from high school a decade ago, he has bought several houses in East Texas and fixed them up, doing the plumbing and electrical work himself. At age 29 with a wife and three children, he currently has three houses, and if he is let go, he says he could sell one for a profit he estimates at $50,000 to $100,000.

Just a few weeks ago, he and other employees received a note from Trent Latshaw, the head of his company, Latshaw Drilling, saying that layoffs may be necessary this year.

“The people of the older generation tell the young guys to save and invest the money you make and have cash flow just in case,” Mr. Perry said during a work break. “I feel like everything is going to be O.K. This is not going to last forever.”

The most nervous people in Midland seem to be the oil executives who say busts may be inevitable, but how long they last is anybody’s guess.

Over a lavish buffet lunch recently at the Petroleum Club of Midland, the talk was woeful and full of conspiracy theories about how the Saudis were refusing to cut supplies to vanquish the surging American oil industry.

“At $45 a barrel, it shuts down nearly every project,” Steve J. McCoy, Latshaw Drilling’s director of business development, told Mr. Pruett and his guests. “The Saudis understand and they are killing us.”

Mr. Pruett nodded in agreement, adding, “They are trash-talking the price of oil down.”

“Everyone has been saying `Happy New Year,’” Mr. Pruett continued. “Yeah, some happy new year.”

To See The Future Of The Western Canadian Economy Look To Texas

UPDATE: May 21, 2015.  Goldman Sachs has just released an oil price forecast suggesting that North Sea Brent crude will still be $55 in 2020, five years from now.  As Alberta’s Western Canadian Select (WCS) bitumen is valued lower on commodity markets this is extremely bad news for Canada. Further, the well-known Canadian economic forecasting firm, Enform is predicting that job losses across all of western Canada, not only Alberta, could reach 180,000. 

UPDATE: January 15, 2015. Target announced today that it will be closing all 133 stores in Canada, including the Vernon and Kelowna stores. eliminating at least a couple of hundred local $10/hr jobs and a handful of slightly better paid management jobs. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Target’s 17,000 + Canadian layoffs of low-income workers will be the largest in Canadian history.

To Understand Alberta’s Future, Look to Texas

Brace yourself. I haven’t gotten the sense that the coming economic bust in western Canada has yet sunk in with all Canadians. The problem is centered in Alberta, but radiates throughout western Canada, and even well beyond in complex ways. If you want to get a credible sense of what we are facing, you need only look to journals like The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Bloomberg and many others to get the evidence you may seek.  Kelowna Now‘s recent story on jobs in Kelowna noted a key issue locally: many of the employed in Kelowna work up north in the oil patch. Then there is the matter of the Nova Scotia workers in Fort MacMurray and their future. Closer to home than Texas, we should also consider the radiant job loss effect in places like North Dakota and Wyoming.  SF Gate has also reported 700 layoffs by a Canadian oil company in Bakersfield, California.  The “pollyanna’s” who are denying that this is happening are “whistling in the graveyard.”

Reblogged from The Wall Street Journal Blog:

Plunging Oil Prices Test Texas’ Economic Boom

Downturn Has Many Wondering How Lone Star State Will Weather a Bust

Oil tankers are loaded with crude in Corpus Christi, Texas, in December. The area has prospered in recent years due to the energy boom in the Eagle Ford shale formation, but falling prices could test that.

Retired Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher remembers a Texas bumper sticker from the late 1980s, when falling energy prices triggered an ugly regional downturn: “Dear Lord, give me another boom and I promise I won’t screw it up.”

Texas got its wish with another energy-driven boom, and now plunging oil prices are testing whether the state has held up its end of the bargain.

The Lone Star State’s economy has been a national growth engine since the recession ended, expanding at a rate of 4.4% annually between 2009 and 2013, twice the pace of the U.S. as a whole.

The downturn in energy prices now has triggered a debate over whether Texas simply got lucky in recent years, thanks to a hydraulic-fracturing oil-and-gas boom, or whether it hit on an economic playbook that other states, and the country as a whole, could emulate.

One in seven jobs created nationally during the 50-month expansion has been created in Texas, where the unemployment rate, at 4.9%, is nearly a percentage point lower than the national average.

But a big dose of the state’s good fortune comes from the oil-and-gas sector. Midland, which sits atop the oil-rich Permian Basin, had the fastest weekly wage growth in the country among large countries: 9% in the 12 months ending June 2014.

Now that oil prices have plunged nearly 51% from their June peak to $52.69 a barrel, some Texans sobered by memories of past energy busts are bracing for a fall. The argument among economists and business leaders isn’t whether the state will be hurt, but how badly.

Mr. Kelleher is among the Texans predicting this won’t be a replay of the 1980s oil bust and banking crisis, which drove the state unemployment rate to 9.3%. As evidence, he and others cite a more cautious banking sector, a tax and regulatory environment favorable to business, and a state economy less dependent on energy and other resources.

“Texas has become a well-rounded state,” Mr. Kelleher said. “People did remember not to overextend themselves.”

Michael Feroli, a New York-based economist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., is one of the skeptics of the “this-time-is-different” camp. Although the oil-and-gas industry today makes up a smaller share of Texas’ workforce than it did in the mid-1980s, it accounts for roughly the same share of its economic output, he said. So a decline in oil prices similar to the plunge of more than 50% seen in the mid-1980s, he said, could have a similar result: recession.

“If oil prices stay where they are, Texas is going to face a more difficult economic reality,” Mr. Feroli said.

Oil exploration companies already are scaling back drilling plans for next year. Oil-field-service companies that provide labor and machinery, such as Halliburton Co. andSchlumberger Ltd. , are laying off workers. The number of oil and gas rigs in Texas, which had grown 80% since the start of 2010, has been dropping over the past few weeks. The rig count in the state stood at 851 at the end of December, down from 905 in mid-November, according to oil-field-services firm Baker Hughes Inc., which compiles the data. Meanwhile, yields on junk bonds tied to energy companies have soared as investors brace for financial fallout from the oil-price bust.

Yet Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher likens the J.P. Morgan report to bull droppings. He noted that sectors including trade and transportation, leisure and hospitality, education and construction all have produced more new jobs in recent years than energy. Houston has experienced fast growth in the medical sector, Austin in technology.

“This is a test,” Mr. Fisher said. “Is Texas indeed as diversified as people like me say it is?”

ENLARGE

Analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimate that a 45% decline in the price of oil—from $100 a barrel to near $55—will reduce Texas payrolls by 125,000, all else being equal. Payrolls were up 447,900 in November from a year earlier, or 3.9%. The Dallas Fed estimate implies growth of more than 300,000, or nearly 3%, even with a lower oil price, still faster than the national average of 2%.

Pia Orrenius, a Dallas Fed regional economist, sees the price bust washing through the Texas economy in both positive and negative ways. It could help the booming petrochemicals sector and manufacturing by lowering costs. A construction boom centered on petrochemical plants is already under way along the Gulf Coast, a source of blue-collar jobs. Yet the price bust will hurt sectors like construction, transportation and business services that have expanded to serve the oil industry, and consumer spending more broadly as workers lose their jobs.

“We will see significant spillovers,” Ms. Orrenius said.

Nowhere is the evolution of the Texas economy more apparent than in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, with 2.2 million people.

After oil-and-gas prices crashed in the mid-1980s, energy companies in the city laid off thousands of petroleum engineers and other well-paid industry workers, and the real-estate market crumbled, helping trigger a regional-banking collapse. One in six homes and apartments in Houston stood vacant at the beginning of 1987, and the county tax rolls dropped by $8 billion, according to a history of the bust by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That prompted civic leaders to push for an expanded medical sector and more diversified economy.

Today, the Texas Medical Center is the world’s largest medical complex, with more than 20 hospitals, three medical schools and six nursing schools, employing 106,000 people. Health-care and social-services companies made up 10.4% of jobs in the greater Houston area in 2013, compared with 5.9% in 1985, according to Labor Department data. Roughly 4.3% of jobs in the county were in the oil-and-gas industry last year, down from 5.9% in 1985.

Still, most of the 26 Fortune 500 companies based in Houston are in energy, includingPhillips 66 , Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. , and energy employees flush with cash recently spurred a run-up in real-estate prices in the region that has raised red flags among some economists. Fitch Ratings recently declared that Houston home prices were the second-most overvalued in the country, behind Austin, when compared with historical averages, and that current prices may be unsustainable, citing the current oil-price drop.

The energy boom has strengthened the state’s budget. Revenues are expected to take a hit with falling levies on oil and natural gas production, but less than previously. The levies accounted for 9.4% of state tax revenue in 2013 compared with 20.2% in 1985, according to data from the Texas state comptroller’s office.

Texas banks also appear to be in better shape to handle a shock than they were in the 1980s. Between 1986 and 1990, more than 700 Texas banks and thrifts failed. During the worst of the last financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, seven Texas banks failed, according to the FDIC. Fewer than 1% of state banks have high measures of nonperforming loans now, compared with 20% in the late 1980s, according to the Dallas Fed.

Texas is the only state that limits home-equity borrowing to 80% of a home’s value, a provision enshrined in its state constitution. The rule helped keep Texas homeowners from piling up debt against their homes during the national real-estate boom of the 2000s. Only 10% of nonprime mortgages were underwater in 2011 in Texas, compared with 54% in the rest of the U.S., according to the Dallas Fed.

“Even though we saw our banking brethren in other states doing these crazy deals, we refused to do so because we remembered the ’80s,” said Pat Hickman, chief executive of Happy State Bank, a community bank in the Texas Panhandle. “We learned lessons.”

Texas has something else going for it: A bounty of resources other than oil and natural gas, most notably, land and people.

The state’s population grew 29% between 2000 and 2014, more than twice as fast as the U.S. as a whole, according to the Census Bureau. The median age in Texas was 34 last year, 3 1/2 years younger than the nation overall. Growth has come from a combination of migration from other states, immigration and a higher birthrate than the national average.

The U.S. economy has been restrained in recent years by slow labor-force growth. Texas, on the other hand, has more young people entering their prime working years and fewer elderly residents, as a percentage of the population, than does the nation overall. That has given its economy a solid foundation of available workers.

Workforce and land were two factors that drew Firefly Space Systems, a manufacturer of low-orbit rockets, to the Austin area earlier this year. The firm needed a place to launch test rockets and chose Texas over Los Angeles for an expansion. It found a supply of tech-savvy workers in the Austin area and plentiful land.

“It was the geography, and it was making sure our employees were comfortable there,” said Maureen Gannon, the firm’s vice president for business development. The firm plans to hire 200 people in coming years.