Marin Katusa: 199 Days of Hell

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

Just after I signed the publishing agreement for my first book, The Colder War, I realized how much research I was going to end up doing, specifically in areas that I never thought would be so integral to my subject area: energy and mining. Along the way, I came across some fascinating events that were completely out of my area of expertise but gave me a better sense for the unintended consequences in an historical perspective of the events that led to where we are today.

One epic event that really stood out for me, which I will discuss today, is the bloodiest battle of all time, to my knowledge. Over 2 million soldiers and civilians died in this one battle that lasted 199 days from start to finish. (If you know of one particular battle—not a war—that had more deaths, I would love to hear about it)

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What was the catalyst for the bloodiest and most horrible battle of all time? Oil. Before I get into why it was, I want to present the events that led up to this epic battle.

In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Hitler focused on Western Europe and on defeating France by the mid 1940s, he became rattled by Soviet expansion in the East, which by this time included the occupation of the Baltic states (now Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) by the Soviets.

The Day That Changed the World

A critical, often forgotten event (especially by the French) occurred on June 22, 1940. That was the day the French surrendered to the Nazis and signed the armistice. Four days later, the Soviet Union made a decision that ended up becoming one of the critical turning points of WW II.

Initially, the Soviets planned on annexing parts of Romania via full-scale invasion. Sound familiar? I’ll touch on Crimea later in my missive, but for now, stick with me—this gets very interesting.

However, the military masters of the Soviet Union recognized that with the fall of France, out went the French guarantee of security at Romania’s borders.

So rather than actually invading Romania, the Soviets sent an ultimatum to Romania: withdraw from our territories of interest—which were Northern Bukovina and Northern and Southern Bessarabia—and avoid military conflict with the Soviet Union. If not, the Red Army will invade.

Germany via the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact recognized the Soviet Union’s interest in Bessarabia; thus Hitler became paranoid about the Soviet Union’s expansion from the east to Central Europe. But more specifically, Hitler feared the proximity of the Russians to the Romanian oil fields, which the Nazis depended on.

By early August 1940, these territories that Romania withdrew from made up the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, and they were quickly folded into the Soviet Union.

By late 1940, Hitler made the decision that I believe was a critical turning point of WW II. Initially, Hitler planned on invading the Soviet Union in May 1941, but Yugoslavia and Greece got in his way, and his plans were delayed by five weeks until the Nazis defeated those armies in the Balkans.

The Russian winter came early in 1941, but Hitler believed that the Nazi Germany army was much superior to the Red Army (and they were more superior at the time) and that the Soviets would be defeated before November 1941.

The Nazis sent 3 million soldiers. Stalin met the Nazi offensive with over 5 million Soviet soldiers. I don’t know of a larger invasion in the history of mankind.

To put this battle in perspective, it’s the equivalent of battle lines spanning from Florida to New York (over 1,100 miles). Also, over 90% of all Nazi casualties in WW II were due to their invasion of the Soviet Union.
By late July 1941, the Nazis fought their way within 200 miles of Moscow; by this time, they had progressed over 400 miles into the Soviet Union in less than a month.

Initially, the Germans made incredible progress. However, heavy rains in early July hampered their speed as the terrain became a mud bath, and by this point, Stalin ordered a scorched earth policy, where the Soviet troops destroyed all infrastructure, burned all crops, and dismantled and evacuated all factories and equipment via rail to the east upon the Nazi advance.

As winter set in, the progress of the Nazis came to a standstill. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and subsequently, the United States joined the Allies and entered WW II.

Hitler was well aware that the biggest priority of the Americans upon entering WW II was to defeat the Nazis. He knew he had to bring a quick defeat to the Soviet Union and drastic measures had to be taken.
Hitler believed that rather than attacking Moscow (the heavily fortified capital of the Soviet Union), Germany should go after the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus. For Hitler, the victory would result in a triple positive for Germany:

1. Cut off the flow of oil to the Soviet resistance;

2. Divert the oil produced from the oil fields in Caucasus for the Nazi cause and for future battles against the Americans; and

3. Cut off Soviet access to the breadbasket areas of Ukraine.

To execute Hitler’s plan, the Nazis would have to control a key industrial city, which happened to be named after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin: Stalingrad (today known as Volgograd). The Nazis invaded, and Stalin threw everything the Red Army had at this battle, even refusing to allow the civilian population to be evacuated. He believed the soldiers would fight to their death if civilians were in the city.

He was right. Stalin’s ruthless orders worked. The Red Army, including civilians who worked in factories made up of men and women of all ages, put up a ferocious resistance doing whatever possible. The Germans had superior weapons, training, and land and air support. To put things in perspective, the average Soviet soldier, upon arriving to Stalingrad, had less than one day’s life expectancy.

The battle eventually evolved into concrete guerilla warfare within the city ruins. The Nazis captured 90% of the city by September 1942 and by this time, they took over 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, most of which never returned alive.

The Soviets’ luck changed on November 19, 1942, when they decided to launch Operation Uranus, which many at the time within the Red Army believed would be their last chance to defeat the Nazis. With 90% of Stalingrad under Nazi command, the Soviet plan was to swing multiple army troops around the Nazis and surround them. It worked.

Up to this point, Hitler publicly made announcements that the Germans would never leave Stalingrad. For most of the German soldiers, this proved to be true. Rather than having the German troops attempt a breakout (and going against Hitler’s promise of Germany never leaving Stalingrad), they were ordered to fight, even though they were running low on ammunition and starvation had set in within the German camp.

On January 31, 1943, German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Soviets. After the Nazi defeat in Stalingrad by the Soviets, it was only a matter of time before Germany lost the war. Hitler never got access to the oil fields, and over 2 million soldiers died.

Déjà Vu and the Butterfly Effect

Let’s reflect back to the events that followed. Hitler became paranoid about the Soviet expansion after the signed 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

Remind you of anything?

We see NATO today supplying military troops and land and air force in the Baltics for similar fears about Russian expansion. NATO sees Crimea today as a reminder of the Baltics’ situation in 1940. Ukraine is not in a civil war—let’s make that very clear. A civil war is defined as two or more groups fighting for control of the government. What’s going on in eastern Ukraine is not a civil war, but rather a war of secession; the two breakaway provinces don’t want to go to Kiev. Furthermore, NATO will not stand for a secession.

Putin is facing sanctions from the West and military force by NATO… not to mention that oil has dropped in half from over $100/bbl to under $50 a barrel in the last 12 months. Hitler’s decision, based on actions that essentially involved a small territory (now known as Moldova) sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, resulted in the bloodiest battle of all time.

But behind the scenes there is always tension and momentum building and waiting for a catalyst to release the pressure that has built up. We have seen this many times in the past where an insignificant event on the global stage puts in motion events with shocking results. But there is always more behind the story than a “simple” catalyst or unconnected events.

The Arab Spring eventually brought to the global front a built-up dissatisfaction of many youths and lower-income people of human rights violations, dictatorships, absolute monarchy, extreme poverty, and many other factors. The catalyst for the protests in Tunisia was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010.
I recall a specific event I experienced in Kuwait in December 2010, where a Pakistani taxi driver shared with me his story of anger and contempt with the government of Kuwait. I asked him to be my driver for the week, mainly because he spoke English and had been in Kuwait for 10 years and knew his way around, but I also enjoyed his company.

But I got much more than I expected. He took me around Kuwait, where I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. Every city in the world has those areas you will never see advertised in the travel guidebooks.

Kuwait—a “dry country,” meaning you cannot buy alcohol—wasn’t that difficult to find alcohol in if you really wanted it. Yet at what seemed to me to be every hour on the hour, I heard prayers blasting through the air. My taxi driver wasn’t an extremist; he was Muslim—and no different than any Catholic, Jew, or atheist—working his cab 12-15 hours a day, wanting a better life for his family. He was a good guy, caught up in the momentum that was building, which led to the Arab Spring.

The spread of the Arab Spring was muted by high oil prices. That is fact, though not a popular one. How did Saudi Arabia prevent protests in its kingdom? The House of Saud promised tens of billions of dollars in social programs.

How will the oil producing nations, such as members of OPEC, Russia, Canada, and Mexico, fare at $45 oil in 2015? How will the African petro-states function? How will the investors, who are exposed to billions of dollars of debt in the US energy sector (below is the payment schedule of all public companies’ debt payments due over the next 11 years), going to fare if oil stays below $50 in 2015?

History doesn’t repeat, but human nature has a repeatable pattern. The growth for energy will only increase in the future, even with energy efficiency improvements.

The fact is, the world will consume more oil in five years than it does today… even though I get many emails a day from uninformed individuals telling me why fossil fuels are awful (and yes, to the 100+ people who have emailed stating that Tesla cars will kill the need for oil—keep on dreaming. And by the way, your Tesla is on average powered over 50% by coal and natural gas—so you all are absolute hypocrites).

The world still needs uranium to power its nuclear base-load power, such as the US, which is currently the world’s largest consumer of uranium, using about 25% of the world’s uranium. China won’t be far behind, and it’s catching up quickly.

You Need to Be Brave When Everyone Is Fearful

Investing isn’t easy. If you want to do well in cyclical sectors, such as energy or mining, you must be able to buy when the sector is unloved and beaten down. Unfortunately, from a psychology standpoint, it’s easier to buy when it feels good.

Here is a list of rules of speculation I like to follow:

1. Never put more than 10% of your speculative portfolio into any one stock. True success in speculation is only achieved with risk mitigation and letting your winners ride. While putting all your eggs in one basket theoretically can pay off in a big way, it rarely does so in reality. If your speculative portfolio is worth $50,000, don’t put more than $5,000 into any one junior.

2. If, for whatever reason, an investment causes you stress to the point that you cannot sleep or are overly distracted from your daily life, sell enough stock to alleviate the situation. Life is too short. Have fun. If your stress level becomes intolerable, you’re either overinvested or speculating just isn’t for you. That’s okay; you’ve found out more about yourself. Speculation is a journey where the reward is money and the experience, but it’s not for everyone. If your wife, husband, family, or partner is hating you because you lost the family’s vacation money, look back to Rule 1.

3. Know what you own and why you own it. The Casey Energy Report posts all relevant news about the companies in our portfolio every Monday and Thursday after market close.

4. Use trailing stops and stop losses. For liquid stocks, they’re important, in my opinion. We work to create for you a balanced portfolio of high-risk speculations along with mid risk and lower risk yield plays, and we lock in gains along the way.
   
   The current market is exciting but carries a significant level of volatility. We want to be able to capture the upside and hold on to it, which is best accomplished by locking in gains with trailing stops (we did this very well earlier in 2014). Then we can sit patiently on the sidelines and await a general correction that allows us to get back into our favorite stocks, which we are currently doing.
   
   There’s a big difference between a trailing stop and stop loss. A stop loss limits losses. It’s the price you set to sell your stock in case the trade goes south on you. A standard stop loss is a sell order that’s automatically triggered if the security falls 20% (or whatever you put in for your stop-loss percentage) below your purchase price. For example, if you bought a stock for $10 and you put in a 20% stop loss, it would be $8, at which point you would lose $2. Unfortunately, stop losses (and trailing stops) don’t work for illiquid juniors, so be careful. That’s why Rule 3 above is so important.
   
   A trailing stop locks in your gains. Let’s say you paid $10 for a stock, and it goes to $14. If you’d be happy to sell at $13 and pocket $3 per share in profit, then that’s where you set your trailing stop, in case the price retreats to that level. Of course, if the stock continues to push higher, you can always move your stop along with it, to capture even more profit.
   
   Many of our trailing stops were hit in early to mid-2014, a good indicator that we’ve been right to be careful amid this market’s volatility.

5. Give your speculation some time to play out, as with trends like the European Energy Renaissance. Such speculations demand that the investor wait for the market to catch on to the potential. This one specific rule—be patient—is probably the most difficult of all to stick to. A speculator is his or her own worst enemy.

6. Risk mitigation. Reduce your risk while preserving profit by using the Casey Free Ride formula when the opportunity arises. It’s prudent speculation.

Getting Your Casey Free Ride

Number of shares to sell =	Purchase price of stock	x Number of shares bought
	Stock price when you want to sell

7. Know that you’ll make mistakes, and that will result in losing money on that trade. Not every trade will be a winner. But if one or two of the junior high-risk speculations work out, they will make the whole journey more than worthwhile. I’m speaking from personal experience.

This is just a short list of many of the rules to speculation.

With oil at $45 per barrel, could there be massive changes that many aren’t expecting?

Definitely.

If you’ve been a subscriber of mine, you know how cautious I’ve been since early to mid-2014 on the price of oil.

What’s Next in the Energy Sector?

In the past four months, I’ve personally invested more cash than I have in the last four years. Could I be wrong? You bet I could, but this is not my first downturn.

I also believe in not owning too many positions, as I don’t have many positions either personally nor in the Casey Energy Report. I follow a very disciplined approach, and my style isn’t for everyone. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that fact.

If you’re looking for a newsletter that recommends a stock every month on the month and has 50 stocks in its portfolio, I’m not your guy.

But if you’re looking for in-depth research, experience, and exposure to my vast network in the resource sector, then you may want to pay attention to what I’m doing.

There’s blood in the streets in the energy sector—and I love that!

Now if you believe that to be successful in the resource sector one must be a contrarian to be rich, as I do, now is the time to become engaged.

Come see what I am doing with my own money. You’ll get access to every Casey Energy Report newsletter I’ve written in the last decade, and my current recommendations with specific price and timing guidance. It’s all available right here.

I can’t make the trade for you, but I can help you help yourself. I’m making big bets—are you ready to step up and join me?

The article 199 Days of Hell was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

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The New Normal for Crude Oil?

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

You may have come across the word “contango” in an oil related news report or article recently and wondered, “What’s contango?”

It isn’t the Chinese version of the tango.

Contango is a condition in a commodity market where the futures price for the commodity is higher than the current spot price. Essentially, the future price of oil is higher than what oil is worth today.

The above forward curve on oil is what contango looks like. There’s more value placed on a barrel of oil tomorrow and in the future than over a barrel today because of the increased value of storage.

I personally believe our resource portfolios are in portfolio contango—but that’s an entirely separate discussion that I’ll get to later. In today’s missive, I want to focus entirely on oil contango.

Crude oil under $50 per barrel may seem to put most of the producers out of business, but many oil and gas exploring and producing (E&P) companies are sheltered from falling prices in the form of hedges.

Often, companies will lock in a price for their future production in form of a futures commodity contract. This provides the company with price stability, as it’s sure to realize the price it locked in at some future date when it must deliver its oil.

But the market will always figure out a way to make money—and here’s one opportunity: the current oil contango leads to plenty of demand for storage of that extra oil production.

With US shale being one of the main culprits of excess crude oil production, storage of crude in US markets have risen above seasonally adjusted highs in the last year. This abundance of stored crude has pushed the current spot price of crude oil toward five year lows, as current demand is just not there to take on more crude production.

When in contango, a guaranteed result is an increase in demand for cheap storage of the commodity, in order to clip the profit between the higher commodity price in the future versus what’s being paid for the commodity at present. This is precisely what’ playing out in oil today.

Contago, Five Years Later

Looking back at the similarities of the 2009 dramatic free fall in oil prices to $35 per barrel, after a five year hiatus, crude has returned to a similar price point, and the futures market has returned to contango (green shows oil in contango).

Floating Storage Is Back in Vogue

Oil traders are now taking advantage of the contango curve through floating storage in the form of waterborne oil tankers.

This is what a big oil tanker looks like:

I’m personally reminded of contango whenever I look out my living room window:

Here’s a photo taken out my living room window—and this is non-busy part of the harbor. At times when I do my runs along the seawall, there have been up to 30 large oil tankers just sitting in the harbor. (On a side note, Olivier and I went for a run in July along the Vancouver seawall, and we counted 26 oil tankers.) All that pricey Vancouver waterfront will have an incredible view of even more oil tankers in the years to come when the pipelines are eventually built. I can only imagine what the major import harbors of China and the US look like… never mind the number of oil tankers sitting in the export nations’ harbors and the Strait of Hormuz. Multiply the above by at least 50 red circles.

As the spread between future delivery of oil and the spot price widened, traders looking to profit from the spread would purchase crude at spot prices and store it on oil tanker ships out at sea. The difference between the spread and the cost to store the crude per barrel is referred to as the arbitrage profit taken by traders. Scale is a very important factor in crude storage at sea: therefore, traders used very large crude carriers (VLCC) and Suezmax ships that hold between 1-2 million barrels of crude oil.

In the late summer of 2014, rates charged for crude tankers began to climb to yearly highs because of the lower price that spurred hoarding of crude oil. This encouraged VLCCs to lock in one year time charter rates close to and above their breakeven costs to operate the ship.

Time charter rates share similarities to the oil futures market, as ships are able to lock in a daily rate for the use of their ships over a fairly long period of time. VLCC spot rates have reached around $51,000 per day; however, these rates tend to be booked for a shorter period of around three months. These higher spot rates tend to reflect the higher cost paid to crew a VLCC currently against locking in crew and operating costs over a longer-term charter that could last a year. Crude oil is often stored on floating VLCCs for periods of six months to a year depending, on the contango spread.

Floating Storage: Economics

Many VLCCs are locking in yearlong time charter rates at or above $30,000-$33,000 per day, as that tends to be the breakeven rate to operate the vessel. If we assume that a VLCCs charge their breakeven charter rate and we include insurance, fuel, and financing costs that would be paid by the charterer, storage on most VLCCs in the 1-2 million barrel ranges are barely economic at best.

However, they’ll soon become profitable across the board once the oil futures and spot price spread widens above $6-$7 per barrel.

The red star depicts the current spread between the six-month futures contract from the futures price in February 2015. Currently companies are losing just under $0.20 per barrel storing crude for delivery in six months. However, once that $6-$7 hurdle spread is achieved, most VLCCs carrying 2 million barrels of crude will be economic to take advantage of the arbitrage in the contango futures curve.

The VLCC and ULCC Market

VLCC= Very Large Crude Carrier
ULCC=Ultra-Large Crude Carrier

VLCCs store 1.25-2 million barrels of oil for each cargo. Globally, there are 634 VLCCs with around 1.2 billion barrels of storage capacity, or over one-third of the US’s total oil production. The VLCC market is fairly fractioned, and the largest fleet of VLCCs by a publicly traded company belongs to Frontline Ltd. with 25 VLCCs. The largest private company VLCC fleet belongs to Tankers International with 37 VLCCs. In early December, Frontline and Tankers International created a joint venture to control around 10% of the VLCC market. Other smaller VLCC fleets belong to DHT with 16 VLCCS, and Navios Maritime with 8 VLCCs.

The lowest time charter breakeven costs of $24,000 per day are associated with the largest VLCC fleet from Frontline Ltd. and Tankers International. This is followed by the smaller fleets that have time charter breakeven costs of around $29,000 per day. Of course, on average the breakeven costs associated with most VLCCs is around $30,000 per day, and current time charter rates are around $33,000.

Investing in companies with VLCC fleets as the contango trade develops can generate great potential for further profits for investors. The focus of these investments would be between the publicly traded companies DHT Holdings, Frontline Ltd., and Navios Maritime.

But one must consider that investing in these companies can be very volatile because of the forward curve’s ability to quickly change. It isn’t for the faint of heart.

However, if current oil prices stay low, there will be an increase in tanker storage and thus a sustained increase in the spot price of VLCCs. However, eventually low prices cure low prices, and the market goes from contango to backwardation. It always does and always will.

Shipping companies have been burdened by unprofitable spot and charter pricing since the financial crisis, and these rates have only recently started to increase.

Warning!

As I sit here on a Saturday morning writing this missive, I want to remind all investors now betting on this play that they’re actually speculating, not investing.

There’s a lot of risk for one to think playing the tankers is a sure bet. I have a pretty large network of professional traders and resource investors, and I do not want to see the retail crowd get caught on the wrong side of the contango situation.

In the past, spot rates for the VLCCs usually decline into February and have dropped to as low as under $20,000 per day. It is entirely possible that if the day rates of VLCCs go back to 2012-2013 levels, operators will lose money.

Conclusion: this speculation on tankers is entirely dependent on the spot price and the forward curve.
The risk of this short term trade is that these companies are heavily levered, and some are just hanging on by a thread. Although this seasonal boost to spot rates has been a positive for VLCCs and other crude carriers, the levered nature of these companies could spell financial disaster or bankruptcy if spot rates return to 2012-2013 levels.

What should be stressed are the similarities to the short-lived gas rally in the winter of 2013-‘14, and the effect these prices have had on North American natural gas companies. A specific event similar to the polar vortex has occurred in the oil market, which has spurred a seasonal increase in the spot price tankers charge to move and store oil.

However, much like the North American natural gas market, the VLCC market is oversupplied; a temporary increase in spot prices that have led to increased transport and storage of oil will not be enough to lift these carriers from choppy waters ahead. Future VLCC supplies are expected to rise, with 20 net VLCCs being built and delivered in 2015 and 33 in 2016. This is much more than the 17 net VLCCs added in 2013 and 9 in 2014.

Another looming and very possible threat to these companies is the same debt threat that affected energy debt markets as global oil prices plummeted. If VLCC and other crude carriers experience a fall in spot prices, these companies’ junk debt could be downgraded to some of the lowest debt grades that border a default rating. This will increase financing costs and in turn increase the operating breakeven costs to operate these crude carrying vessels. The supply factor, high debt, and potentially short-lived seasonally high spot market could all affect the long-term appreciation of these VLCC stock prices. Investing in these companies is very risky over the long run, but a possible trade exists if storage and transport of oil continues to increase for these crude carriers.

Portfolio Contango—An Opportunity Not Seen in Decades

If you talk to resource industry titans—the ones who’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars and been in the sector for 40 years—they’re now saying that they’ve never seen the resource share prices this bad. Brokerage firms focused on the resource sector have not just laid off most of their staffs, but many have shut their doors.

The young talent is the first group to be laid off, and there’s a serious crisis developing in the sector, as many of the smart young guns have left the sector to claim their fortunes in other sectors.
There’s blood in the streets in the resource sector.

Now if you believe that, as I do, to be successful in the resource sector one must be a contrarian to be rich, now is the time to act.

I have invested more money in the junior resource sector in the last six months than I have in the last five years. I believe we’re in contango for resource stocks, meaning that the future price of the best juniors will be worth much more than they are currently.

I have my rules in speculating, and you’ll learn from my experience—and more important, my network of the smartest and most successful resource mentors whom I have shadowed for many years.

So how can we profit from the blood in these markets? Easy.

Take on my “Katusa Challenge.” You’ll get access to every Casey Energy Report newsletter I’ve written in the last decade, and my current recommendations with specific price and timing guidance. There’s no risk to you: if you don’t like the Casey Energy Report or don’t make any money over your first three months, just cancel within that time for a full, prompt refund, no questions asked. Even if you miss the three month cutoff, cancel anytime for a prorated refund on the unused part of your subscription.

As a subscriber, you’ll receive instant access to our current issue, which details how to protect yourself from falling oil prices, plus our current top recommendations in the oil patch. Do your portfolio a favor and have me on your side to increase your chances of success. I can’t make the trade for you, but I can help you help yourself.

I’m making big bets—are you ready to step up and join me?

The article The New Normal for Oil? was originally published at caseyresearch.com

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Keystone XL Veto is Partisan Political Disaster for America

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

The controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline is proof positive that American politics have gone from debate to pure partisan propaganda – at the expense of business and even common sense.  With over half a million miles of pipeline already, failing to replace that aging infrastructure only means more oil flowing via crumbling pipelines – some 50 years old – and dangerous rail cars, like the one that killed dozens in Quebec in 2013. 

NY Times Best-selling author of The Colder War, Marin Katusa, explains why President Obama’s veto of the Keystone legislation is far riskier than the pipeline itself in this riveting, short video:

For a better understanding of just how much political spin, and outright lies, now come along with news on global energy, read USA Today and Amazon.com best seller: The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America's Grasp. Get a free sample chapter at www.colder war.com.

The article Keystone XL Veto Is Partisan Political Disaster for America was originally published at casey research

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America is Going to Have to Learn to Play Nicely......Where Have All the Statesmen Gone?

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

One of the most striking things about the Colder War—as I explore in my new book of the same name—has been the contrast between the peevish tone of the West’s leaders compared to the more grown-up and statesmanlike approach that Putin is taking in international affairs.

Western leaders and their unquestioning media propagandists appear to believe that diplomatic relations are some kind of reward for good behavior. But it’s actually more important to establish a constructive dialogue with your enemies or rivals than your friends, because that’s where you need to find common ground. Indeed, it’s been the basis for diplomacy since time immemorial.

Reassuringly, despite having been the target of the Ukraine crisis rather than the instigator, Putin still sees the West as a potential partner, not an enemy. Nor does, he says, Russia have any interest in building an empire of its own. In theory, if Putin is sincere, there should be plenty of room for cooperation, especially in the fight against terrorism.

As Putin said in his speech at the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi in October—whose theme was “The World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules”—he hasn’t given up on working with the West on shared risks and common goals, provided it’s based on mutual respect and an agreement not to interfere in one another’s domestic affairs.

Putin has, of course, already shown that he can rise above the fray. By negotiating the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal under international supervision, he did Obama a big favor and got him off the hook in Syria. But his collaboration with Obama went further than that. Putin had helped persuade Iran to consider making concessions on its nuclear program and was working behind the scenes on North Korean issues.

But as we’re discovering, this was precisely the sort of statesmanship that the neoconservative holdouts in Washington could simply not abide, because it would wreck the plan they’d been hatching for decades to bring about US military strikes against Assad and to move beyond sanctions and more aggressively confront Iran.

Determined to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin and punish Putin for interfering with their goal of regime change in the Middle East, these masters of chaos—like National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, and Senator John McCain—sprang into action.

These crazies first started fantasizing openly about regime change in Russia, and demonizing the “ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” before helping to topple Ukraine’s constitutionally elected government.

This is hardly the sort of behavior, to put it mildly, that would lead the Russians to trust American motives—especially after two rounds of NATO expansion in Central and Eastern Europe.

And the Russians also really don’t know what to make of the fact that one second Obama is including them on the list of the top global threats, and the next they’re being asked—yet again—to help secure a truly historical rapprochement with Iran. “It’s unseemly for a major and great power to take such a flippant approach toward its partners. When we need you, please help us, and when I want to punish you, obey me,” Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said last week.

The West has squandered the opportunity, after its victory in the Cold War, to establish a new stable system of international relations, with checks and balances, said Putin in Sochi. Instead, the US trashed the system to serve its own selfish ends and made the world a more dangerous place.

A particularly disturbing accusation Putin made is that the U.S. has been using “outright blackmail” against a number of world leaders. “It is not for nothing,” he added, “that ‘big brother’ is spending billions of dollars keeping the whole world, including its own allies, under surveillance.” If true, it would put the US beyond the pale of the civilized global diplomatic community.

Last year Putin reminded Americans, in a New York Times op-ed, that the UN was founded on the basis that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and that it’s this profound wisdom that has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades. The UN risked suffering the same fate as the League of Nations, he said, if America continued to bypass it and take military action without Security Council authorization.

What really amazes Putin—and most right-minded people—is that even after 9/11, when the US finally woke up to the common threat of Islamic terrorism and suffered the most epic blowback of all time, it continued to use various jihadist organizations as an instrument, even after getting its fingers burnt every time.
What did toppling Gaddafi achieve? Nothing, except to turn Libya into a total mess and fill it with al-Qaeda training camps. And what is Obama’s present strategy of funding “moderate” rebels in Syria going to achieve, if not more of the same mayhem, as one US-backed group after another joins forces with the Islamic State?

It’s hard to disagree with Putin that America’s neoconservatives have sown geopolitical chaos, by almost routinely meddling in others’ domestic affairs. He lists the many follies the US has committed, from the mountains of Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda had its roots in CIA-funded operations against the Russians, to Iraq and Saddam’s phantom weapons of mass destruction, to modern-day Syria, where the Islamic State appears to have benefited at least indirectly from some serious funding—and weapons smuggled out of Libya by the CIA.

Instead of searching for global solutions, the Russians think the US has started believing its own propaganda: that its policies and views represent the entire international community, even as the world becomes a multipolar one. It would appear that Putin is in good company. No less a statesman than former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agrees with him.

Sanctions against Russia are a huge mistake, says Kissinger: “We have to remember that Russia is an important part of the international system, and therefore useful in solving all sorts of other crises, for example in the agreement on nuclear proliferation with Iran or over Syria.”

Like Putin, Kissinger argues that a new world order is urgently needed. In an interview in Der Spiegel, he adds that the West has to recognize that it should have made the negotiations about Ukraine’s economic relations with the EU a subject of a dialogue with Russia. After all, he says, Ukraine is a special case, because it was once part of Russia and its east has a large Russian population.

So how has the current generation of American leaders responded to Putin’s accusation—shared by his allies Argentina, Brazil, China, India, and South Africa—that the U.S. is riding roughshod over the interests of other nations?

By mocking him with the sort of childishness that was on display at the G20 summit, where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper grabbed headlines when he told Putin: “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.” While Putin is obviously no saint, his presence at the G20 summit shows that far from being isolated, he continues to be treated as respectable company, despite his actions over Ukraine.

At least Germany and the EU now appear to understand that diplomacy, not military action, is going to resolve differences between Russia and the West—even though Russia expelled one of Germany’s diplomats in Moscow last week. Following up on the four-hour meeting Merkel had with Putin in Melbourne and the call for intensified diplomacy by the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is now engaged in intensive shuttle diplomacy with Moscow.

The world will be better off if we all stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement, as Putin says. That’s what real statesmen would do, rather than trying to provoke Russia into a new Colder War. America is going to have to learn to play nicely. Otherwise, as Putin says, “today’s turmoil will simply serve as a prelude to the collapse of the world order.”

As you can see, there’s no greater force in geopolitics today than Vladimir Putin. But if you understand his role and how it influences the energy sector as Marin Katusa does, you’ll know how to get out in front of the latest moves and profit along the way. Of course, the situation is fluid, which is why Marin launched a brand new advisory dedicated to helping investors avoid energy companies that are being left behind and move into ones that will benefit from the tremendous shifts in capital being created by Putin. (In fact, Marin has the very best plays for taking advantage of cheap oil.)

It’s called The Colder War Letter. And it’s the perfect complement to Marin’s New York Times best seller, The Colder War, and the best way to navigate today’s fast-changing energy sector. When you sign up now, you’ll also receive a FREE copy of Marin’s book. Click here for all the details.

The article Where Have All the Statesmen Gone? was originally published at casey research

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Make No Mistake, the Oil Slump Is Going to Hurt the US Too

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

If you only paid attention to the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the US is going to get away from the collapse in oil prices scott free. According to popular belief, America is even going to be a net winner from cheaper oil prices, because they will act like a tax cut for US consumers. Or so we are told. In reality, though, many of the jobs the U.S. energy boom has created in the last few years are now at risk, and their loss could drag the economy into a recession.

The view that cheaper oil automatically boosts U.S. GDP is overly simplistic. It assumes that US consumers will spend the money they save at the pump on U.S. made goods rather than imports. And it assumes consumers won’t save some of this windfall rather than spending it. Those are shaky enough. But the story that cheap fuel for our cars is good for us is also based on an even more dangerous assumption: that the price of oil won’t fall far enough to wipe out the US shale sector, or at least seriously impact the volume of US oil production.

The nightmare for the US oil industry is that the only way that the market mechanism can eliminate the global oil glut—without a formal agreement between OPEC, Russia, and other producers to cut production—is if the price of oil falls below the “cash cost” of production, i.e., it reaches the price at which oil companies lose money on every single barrel they produce.

If oil doesn’t sink below the cash cost of production, then we’ll have more of what we’re seeing now. US shale producers, like oil companies the world over, are only going to continue to add to the global oil glut—now running at 2-4 million barrels per day—by keeping their existing wells going full tilt.

True, oil would have to fall even further if it’s going to rebalance the oil market by bankrupting the world’s most marginal producers. But that’s what’s bound to happen if the oversupply continues. And because North American shale producers have relatively high cash costs (in the $30 range), the Saudis could very well succeed in making a big portion of US and Canadian oil production disappear, if they are determined to.

In this scenario, the US is clearly headed for a recession, because the US owes nearly all the jobs that have been created in the last few years to the shale boom. All those related jobs in equipment, manufacturing, and transportation are also at stake. It’s no accident that all new jobs created since June 2009 have been in the five shale states, with Texas home to 40% of them.

Even if oil were to recover to $70, $1 trillion of global oil sector capital expenditure—in fields representing up to 7.5 million bbl/d of production—would be at risk, according to Goldman Sachs. And that doesn’t even include the US shale sector! Unless the price of oil miraculously recovers, tens of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas related capital expenditure in the U.S. is going to dry up next year. While US oil and gas capex only represents about 1% of GDP, it still amounts to 10% of total US capex.

We’re not lost quite yet. Producers can hang on for a while, since there has been a lot of forward hedging at higher prices. But eventually hedges run out—and if the price of oil stays down sufficiently long, then the US is facing a massive amount of capital destruction in the energy industry.

There will be spillover into the financial arena, as well. Energy junk bonds may only account for 15% of the US junk bond market, or $200 billion, but the banks are also exposed to $300 billion in leveraged loans to the energy sector. Some of these lenders are local and regional banks, like Oklahoma based BOK Financial, which has to be nervously eyeing the 19% of its portfolio that’s made up of energy loans.

If oil prices stay at $55 a barrel, a third of companies rated B or CCC may be unable to meet their obligations, according to Deutsche Bank. But that looks like a conservative estimate, considering that many North American shale oil fields don’t make money below $55. And fully 50% are uneconomic at $50.

So if oil falls to $40 a barrel, a cascading 2008-style financial collapse, at least in the junk bond market, is in the cards. No wonder the "too big to fail banks" slipped a measure into the recently passed budget bill that put the US taxpayer back on the hook to insure any ill advised derivatives trades!

We know what happened the last time a bubble in financial assets popped in the US. There was a banking crisis, a serious recession, and a big spike in unemployment. It’s hard to see why it should be different this time. It’s a crying shame. The US has come so close to becoming energy independent. But it’s going to have to get its head around the idea that it could become a big oil importer again. In the end, the US energy boom may add up to nothing more than an illusion dependent upon the artificially cheap debt environment created by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy.

However, there are a handful of domestic producers with high operating margins that are positioned to profit right through this slump in oil prices. To find out their names, sign up for Marin Katusa’s just launched advisory, The Colder War Letter.

You’ll also receive monthly updates on the latest geopolitical moves in this struggle to control the world’s oil pricing and the energy sector at large and what it means for your personal wealth. Plus, you’ll get a free hardback copy of Marin’s New York Times bestselling book, The Colder War, just for signing up today. Click here for all the details.

The article Make No Mistake, the Oil Slump Is Going to Hurt the US Too was originally published at casey research

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Why Russia Will Halt the Ruble’s Slide and Keep Pumping Crude Oil

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

The harsh reality is that U.S. shale fields have much more to fear from plummeting oil prices than the Russians, since their costs of production are much higher, says Marin Katusa, author of The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp.

Russia’s ruble may have strengthened sharply Wednesday, but it’s plunge in recent days has encouraged plenty of talk about the country’s catastrophe, with some even proclaiming that the new Russia is about to go the way of the old USSR.

Don’t believe it. Russia is not the United States, and the effects of a rapidly declining currency over there are much less dramatic than they would be in the U.S.

One important thing to remember is that the fall of the ruble has accompanied a precipitous decline in the per barrel price of oil. But the two are not as intimately connected as might be supposed. Yes, Russia has a resource based economy that is hurt by oil weakness. However, oil is traded nearly everywhere in U.S. dollars, which are presently enjoying considerable strength.

This means that Russian oil producers can sell their product in these strong dollars but pay their expenses in devalued rubles. Thus, they can make capital improvements, invest in new capacity, or do further explorations for less than it would have cost before the ruble’s value was halved against the dollar. The sector remains healthy, and able to continue contributing the lion’s share of governmental tax revenues.

Nor is ruble volatility going to affect the ability of most Russian companies to service their debt. Most of the dollar-denominated corporate debt that has to be rolled over in the coming months was borrowed by state companies, which have a steady stream of foreign currency revenues from oil and gas exports.

Russian consumers will be hurt, of course, due to the higher costs of imported goods, as well as the squeeze inflation puts on their incomes. But, by the same token, exports become much more attractive to foreign buyers. A cheaper ruble boosts the profit outlook for all Russian companies involved in international trade. Additionally, when the present currency weakness is added to the ban on food imports from the European Union, the two could eventually lead to an import substitution boom in Russia.

In any event, don’t expect any deprivations to inspire riots in the streets of Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has soared since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. The people trust him. They’ll tighten their belts and there will be no widespread revolt against his policies.

Further, the high price of oil during the commodity super cycle, coupled with a high real exchange rate, led to a serious decline in the Russia’s manufacturing and agricultural sectors over the past 15 years. This correlation — termed by economists “Dutch disease”— lowered the Russian manufacturing sector’s share of its economy to 8% from 21% in 2000.

The longer the ruble remains weak, however, the less Dutch disease will rule the day. A lower currency means investment in Russian manufacturing and agriculture will make good economic sense again. Both should be given a real fillip.

Low oil prices are also good for Russia’s big customers, especially China, with which Putin has been forging ever stronger ties. If, as expected, Russia and China agree to transactions in rubles and/or yuan, that will push them even closer together and further undermine the dollar’s worldwide hegemony. Putin always thinks decades ahead, and any short term loss of energy revenues will be far offset by the long term gains of his economic alliances.

In the most recent development, the Russian central bank has reacted by raising interest rates to 17%. On the one hand, this is meant to curb inflation. On the other, it’s an direct response to the short selling speculators who’ve been attacking the ruble. They now have to pay additional premiums, so the risk/reward ratio has gone up. Speculators are going to be much warier going forward.

The rise in interest rates mirrors how former U.S. Fed Chair Paul Volcker fought inflation in the U.S. in the early ‘80s. It worked for Volcker, as the U.S. stock market embarked on a historic bull run. The Russians — whose market has been beaten down during the oil/currency crisis — are expecting a similar result.

Not that the Russian market is anywhere near as important to that country’s economy as the US’s is to its. Russians don’t play the market like Americans do. There is no Jim Kramerovsky’s Mad Money in Russia.

Russia is not some Zimbabwe-to-be. It’s sitting on a surplus of foreign assets and very healthy foreign exchange reserves of around $375 billion. Moreover, it has a strong debt-to-GDP ratio of just 13% and a large (and steadily growing) stockpile of gold. Why Russia will arrest the ruble’s slide and keep pumping oil
And there is Russia’s energy relationship with the EU, particularly Germany. Putin showed his clout when he axed the South Stream pipeline and announced that he would run a pipeline through Turkey instead.

The cancellation barely lasted long enough to speak it before the EU caved and offered Putin what he needed to get South Stream back on line. Germany is never going to let Turkey be a gatekeeper of European energy security. With winter arriving, the EU’s dependence on Russian oil and gas will take center stage, and the union will become a stabilizing influence on Russia once again.

In short, while the current situation is not working in Russia’s favor, the country is far from down for the count. It will arrest the ruble’s slide and keep pumping oil. Its economy will contract but not crumble. The harsh reality is that American shale fields have much more to fear from plummeting oil prices than the Russians (or the Saudis), since their costs of production are much higher. Many US shale wells will become uneconomic if oil falls much further. And it they start shutting down, it’ll be disastrous for the American economy, since the growth of the shale industry has underpinned 100% of US economic growth for the past several years.

Those waving their arms about the ruble might do better to look at countries facing real currency crises, like oil dependent Venezuela and Nigeria, as well as Ukraine. That’s where the serious trouble is going to come.
The collapse in oil prices is just the opening salvo in a decades long conflict to control the world’s energy trade. To find out what the future holds, specifically how Vladimir Putin has positioned Russia to come roaring back by leveraging its immense natural resource wealth, click here to get your copy of Marin Katusa’s smash hit New York Times bestseller, The Colder War. Inside, you’ll discover how underestimating Putin will have dire consequences.

And you’ll also discover how dangerous the deepening alliance between China, Russia and the emerging markets is to the future of American prosperity. Click here to get your copy.

The article Why Russia Will Halt the Ruble’s Slide and Keep Pumping Oil was originally published at casey research

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German Chancellor Merkel Won’t Let Ukraine Get in the Way of Business

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

The Ukraine crisis has moderated for now, but it should have awakened the world to the new “great game” being played in Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin is positioning Russia to control the global energy trade, knowing that he holds the trump card: Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.

This epic struggle between the US and Russia could change the very nature of the Euro-American trans Atlantic alliance, because Europe is going to have to choose sides.

The numbers in Putin’s OIL = POWER equation are only going to keep getting bigger as Russia’s control and output of energy continues to grow and as Europe’s supply from other sources dwindles—as I outline in my new book, The Colder War. Finland and Hungary get almost all their oil from Russia; Poland more than 75%; Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Belgium about 50%; Germany and the Netherlands, upward of 40%.

Cutting back on energy imports from Russia as a means of pressuring Moscow is hardly in the EU’s best interest.

Germany, the union’s de facto leader, has simply invested too much in its relationship with Putin to sever ties—which is why Chancellor Angela Merkel has blocked any serious sanctions against Russia, or NATO bases in Eastern Europe.

In fact, Germany is moving to normalize its relations with Russia, which means marginalizing the Ukrainian showdown. Ukraine is but a very small part of Moscow’s and Berlin’s plans for the 21^st century. Though the U.S. desperately wants Germany to lean Westward, it has instead been pivoting East. It’s constructing an alliance that will ultimately elbow the US out of Eastern and Central Europe and consign it to the status of peripheral player. (The concept of the “pivot “ in geopolitics was advanced by the celebrated early 20^th century English geographer Halford Mackinder with regard to Russia’s potential to dominate Europe and Asia because it forms a geographical bridge between the two.

Mackinder’s “Heartland Theory” argued that whoever controlled Eurasia would control the world. Such a far flung empire might come into being if Germany were to ally itself with Russia. It’s a doctrine that influenced geopolitical strategists through both World Wars and the Cold War. It was even embraced by the Nazis before Russia became an enemy. And it may still be relevant today—despite the historical animosities between the two countries. After all, the mutually beneficial alliance of a resource-hungry Germany with a resource-rich Russia is a logical one.)

Considering the deepening ties between Russia and Germany in recent years, the real motive for the US’s stoking of unrest in Ukraine may not have been to pull Ukraine out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into the West’s orbit—it may have been primarily intended to drive a wedge between Germany and Russia.

The US almost certainly views the growing trade between them—3,000 German companies have invested heavily in Russia—as a major geopolitical threat to NATO’s health. The much-publicized spying on German politicians by the US and the British—and Germany’s reciprocal surveillance—shows the level of mutual distrust that exists.

If sowing discord between Russia and Germany was America’s goal, the implementation of sanctions might look like mission accomplished. Appearances can be deceptive, though.

Behind the scenes, Germany and Russia maintain a cordial dialogue, made all the easier because Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel get along well on a personal level. They’re so fluent in each other’s languages that they correct their interpreters. They often confer about the possibility of creating a stable, prosperous and secure Eurasian supercontinent.

Despite the sanctions, German and Russian businessmen are still busy forging closer ties. At a shindig in September for German businesses in the North-East and Russian companies from St. Petersburg, Gerhard Schröder—former German prime minister and president, and friend of Putin—urged his audience to continue to build their energy and raw-material partnership.

Schröder’s close personal relationship with Putin is no secret. He considers the Russian president to be a man of utmost trustworthiness, and his Social Democratic Party has always been wedded to Ostpolitik (German for “new Eastern policy”), which asserts that his country’s strategic interest is to bind Russia into an energy alliance with the EU.

Schröder would have us believe that they never talk politics. Yet in his capacity as chair of the shareholders’ committee of Gazprom’s Nord Stream—the pipeline laid on the Baltic seabed which links Germany directly to Russian gas—he continues to advocate for a German-Russian “agreement.”

That’s a viewpoint Merkel shares. In spite of her public criticism of Putin’s policy toward Ukraine, Merkel has gone out of her way to play down any thought of a new Cold War. She’s on the record as wanting Germany’s “close partnership” with Russia to continue—and she’s convinced it will in the not-so-distant future.

Though Merkel has rejected lifting sanctions against Russia and continues to publicly call on Putin to exert a moderating influence on pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists, it looks like Germany is seeking a reasonable way out. That makes sense, given the disproportionate economic price Germany is paying to keep up appearances of being a loyal US ally.

Politicians in Germany are alert to the potential damage an alienated Russia could inflict on German interests. Corporate Germany is getting the jitters as well, and there are a growing number of dissenting voices in that sector. And anti-American sentiment in Germany—which is reflected in the polls—is putting added pressure on Berlin to pursue a softer line rather than slavishly following Washington’s lead in this geopolitical conflict.
With the eurozone threatened by a triple dip recession, expect Germany and the EU to act in their own interests. Germany has too much invested in Russia to let Ukraine spoil its plans.

As you can see, there’s no greater force controlling the global energy trade today than Russia and Vladimir Putin. But if you understand his role in geopolitics as Marin Katusa does, you’ll know how he’s influencing the flow of the capital in the energy sector—and which companies and projects will benefit and which will lose out.

Of course, the situation is fluid, which is why Marin launched a brand new advisory dedicated to helping investors get out in front of the latest chess moves in this struggle and make a bundle in the process.
It’s called The Colder War Letter. And it’s the perfect complement to Marin’s New York Times best-seller, The Colder War, and the best way to navigate and profit in the fast changing new reality of the energy sector. When you sign up now, you’ll also receive a FREE copy of Marin’s book. Click here for all the details.

The article German Chancellor Merkel Won’t Let Ukraine Get in the Way of Business was originally published at casey research

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Russia and China’s Natural Gas Deals are a Death Knell for Canada’s LNG Ambitions

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

In recent years, a number of Asian companies have been betting that Canada will be able to export cheap liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its west coast. These big international players include PetroChina, Mitsubishi, CNOOC, and, until December 3, Malaysian state owned Petronas.

However, that initial interest is decidedly on the wane. In fact, while the British Columbia LNG Alliance is still hopeful that some of the 18 LNG projects that have been proposed will be realized, it’s now looking less and less likely that any of these Canadian LNG consortia will ever make a final investment decision to forge ahead.

That’s thanks to the Colder War—as I explain in detail in my new book of the same name—and the impetus it’s given Vladimir Putin to open up new markets in Asia.

The huge gas export deals that Russia struck with China in May and October—with an agreed-upon price ranging from $8-10 per million British thermal units (mmBtu)—has likely capped investors’ expectations of Chinese natural gas prices at around $10-11 per mmBtu, a level which would make shipping natural gas from Canada to Asia uneconomic.

At these prices, not even British Columbia’s new Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Act—which has halved the post payout tax rate to 3.5% and proposes reducing corporate income tax to 8% from 11%—can make Canadian natural gas globally competitive.

These tax credits are too little, too late, because Canada is years behind Australia, Russia, and Qatar’s gas projects. This means there’s just too much uncertainty about future profit margins to commit the vast amount of capital that will be needed to make Canadian LNG a reality.

Sure, there are huge proven reserves of natural gas in Canada. It’s just been determined that Canada’s Northwest Territories hold 16.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, 40% more than previous estimates.

But the fact is that Canada will remain a high-cost producer of LNG, and its shipping costs to Asia will be much higher than Russia’s, Australia’s, and Qatar’s. So unless potential buyers in Asia are confident that Henry Hub gas prices will stay below $5, they’re unlikely to commit to long-term contracts for Canadian LNG—or US gas for that matter—because compression and shipping add at least another $6 to the price.

Shell has estimated that its proposed terminal, owned by LNG Canada, will cost $40 billion, not including a $4 billion pipeline. As LNG Canada—whose shareholders include PetroChina, Korea Gas Corp., and Mitsubishi Corp.—admits, it’s not yet sure that the project will be economically viable. Even if it turns out to be, LNG Canada says it won’t make a final investment decision until 2016, after which the facility would take five years to build.

But investors shouldn’t hold their breath. It seems like Korea Gas Corp. has already made up its mind. It’s planning to sell a third of its 15% stake in LNG Canada by the end of this year.

And who can blame it? The industry still doesn’t have clarity on environmental issues, federal taxes, municipal taxes, transfer pricing agreements, or what the First Nations’ cut will be. And these are all major hurdles.

Pipeline permits are also still incomplete. The federal government still hasn’t decided if LNG is a manufacturing or distribution business, which matters because if it rules that it’s a distribution business, permitting is going to be delayed.

And to muddy the picture even further, opposition to gas pipelines and fracking is on the rise in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada. While fossil fuel projects are under fire from climate alarmists the world over, Canadian environmentalists are also angry that increased tanker traffic through its pristine coastal waters could lead to oil spills.

Canada is now under the sway of radical environmental groups and think tanks like the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation, which take as a given that Canada should shut down its tar sands industry altogether. For these people, there’s no responsible way to build new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Elsewhere, investors might expect money and jobs to do the talking, but Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, which has called for greenhouse gas limits on oil sands, is now leading the conservatives in the polls. (Just out of curiosity, does Trudeau plan on putting a cap on the carbon monoxide concentration from his marijuana agenda? But I digress.) If a liberal government is elected next year, it might adopt a national climate policy that would cripple gas companies and oil companies alike.

Some energy majors are already shying away from Canadian LNG. BG Group announced in October that it’s delaying a decision on its Prince Rupert LNG project until after 2016. And Apache Corp., partnered with Chevron on a Canadian LNG project, is seeking a buyer for its stake.

Not everyone is throwing in the towel. Yet. ExxonMobil—which is in the early planning phase for the West Coast Canada LNG project at Tuck Inlet, located near Prince Rupert in northwestern British Columbia—has just become a member of the British Columbia LNG alliance.

But Petronas was a key player. It was thought that the company would be moving ahead after British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment approved its LNG terminal, along with two pipelines that would feed it.

Instead, Petronas pulled the plug. We can’t know how many things factored into that decision nor whether it’s absolutely final. All the company would say is that projected costs of C$36 billion would need to be reduced before a restart could be considered. (That $36B figure includes Petronas’s 2012 acquisition of Calgary based gas producer Progress Energy Resources Corp., as well as the C$10 billion proposed terminal, a pipeline, and the cost of drilling wells in BC’s northeast.)

This latest blow leaves Canadian LNG development very much in doubt. In fact, most observers believe that Petronas’s move to the sidelines probably sounds the death knell for the industry, at least for the foreseeable future.
For more on how the Colder War is forever changing the energy sector and global finance itself, click here to get your copy of Marin’s New York Times bestselling book. Inside, you’ll discover more on LNG and how this geopolitical chess game between Russia and the West for control of the world’s energy trade will shape this decade and the century to come.

The article Russia and China’s Natural Gas Deals Are a Death Knell for Canada’s LNG Ambitions was originally published at casey research

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Breakfast with a Lord of War

By David Galland, Partner, Casey Research

For reasons that will become apparent as you read the following article, I was quite reluctant to write it.
Yet, in the end, I decided to do so for a couple of reasons.

The first is that it ties into Marin Katusa’s best selling new book, The Colder War, which I read cover to cover over two days and can recommend warmly and without hesitation. I know that Casey Research has been promoting the book aggressively (in my view, a bit too aggressively), but I exaggerate not at all when I tell you that the book sucked me in from the very beginning and kept me reading right to the end.

The second reason, however, is that I have a story to tell. It’s a true story and one, I believe, which needs to be told. It has to do with a breakfast I had four years ago with a Lord of War.

With that introduction, we begin.

Breakfast with a Lord of War

In late 2010, I was invited to a private breakfast meeting with an individual near the apex of the U.S. military’s strategic planning pyramid. Specifically, the individual we were to breakfast with sits at the side of the long serving head of the department in the Pentagon responsible for identifying and assessing potential threats to national security and devising long term strategies to counter those threats.

The ground rules for the discussion—that certain topics were off limits—were set right up front. Yet, as we warmed up to each other over the course of our meal, the conversation went into directions even I couldn’t have anticipated.

In an earlier mention of this meeting in a Casey Daily Dispatch, I steered clear of much of what was discussed because frankly, it made me nervous. With the passage of time and upon reflection that it was up to my breakfast companion, who spends long days cloaked in secrecy, to know what is allowed in daylight, I have decided to share the entire story.

During our discussion, there were four key revelations, each a bit scarier than the last.

Four Key Revelations

Once we had bonded a bit, the military officer, dressed in his civvies for the meeting, began opening up. As I didn’t record the discussion, the dialogue that follows can only be an approximation. That said, I assure you it is accurate in all the important aspects.

“Which country or countries most concern you?” I asked, not sure if I would get an answer. “China?”
“Well, I’m not going to say too much, but it’s not China. Our analysis tells us the country is too fractured to be a threat. Too many different ethnic and religious groups and competing political factions. So no, it’s not China. Russia, on the other hand…” He left it at that, though Russia would come up again in our conversation on several occasions.

As breakfast was served, the conversation meandered here and there before he volunteered, “There are a couple of things I can discuss that we are working on, one of which won’t surprise you, and one that will.”
“The first is precision guided weaponry.” Simply, the airplane and drone launched weaponry that is deployed so frequently today, four years after our breakfast conversation, that it now barely rates a back-page mention.

“The second,” he continued,” will surprise you. It’s nuclear armaments.”

“Really? I can’t imagine the US would ever consider using nuclear weapons again. Seriously?”

“Yes, there could be instances when using nukes might be advisable,” he answered. “For example, no one would argue that dropping atomic bombs on Japan had been a bad thing.” (I, for one, could have made that argument, but in the interest of harmony didn’t.)

“Even so, I can’t imagine a scenario that would warrant using nukes,” I persisted. “Are there any other countries doing the same sort of research?”

“Absolutely. For example, the Russians would love to drop a bomb that wiped out the people of Chechnya but left the infrastructure intact.”

“So, neutron bombs?”

“Yeah, stuff like that,” he added before turning back to his coffee.

“Okay, well,” I continued, “you at least have to admit that, unlike last century when hundreds of millions of people died directly or indirectly in world wars, pogroms, and so forth—most related to governments—the human race has evolved to the point where death on that scale is a thing of the past. Right?”

I kid you not in the slightest, but at this question the handsome, friendly countenance I had been sitting across from morphed as if literally a mask had been lifted away and was replaced with the emotionless face of a Lord of War.

“That would be a very poor assumption,” he answered coldly before the mask went back on.

I recall a number of thoughts and emotions coursing through my brain at his reply, most prevalently relief that I had moved with my family to La Estancia de Cafayate in a remote corner of Argentina. We didn’t move there to escape war, but after this conversation, I added that to my short list of reasons why the move had been a good idea.

Recapping the conversation later, my associate and I concurred that Russia was in the crosshairs and that if push came to shove, the US was fully prepared to use the new nuclear weapons being worked on.

Four Years Later

As I write, four years after that conversation, it’s worth revisiting just what has transpired.

First, as mentioned, the use of precision-guided weaponry has now firmly entered the vernacular of US warmaking. Point of fact: there are now more pilots being trained to fly drones than airplanes. And the technology has reached the point where there is literally no corner on earth where a strategic hit couldn’t be made. Even more concerning, the political and legal framework that previously caused hesitation before striking against citizens of other countries (outside of an active war zone) has largely been erased. Today Pakistan, tomorrow the world?

Second, instead of winding back the US nuclear program—a firm plank in President Obama’s campaign platform—the Nobel Prize winner and his team have indeed been ramping up and modernizing the US nuclear arsenal. The following is an excerpt from a September 21, 2014 article in the New York Times, titled “U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms”…,,

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.

It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

Third, the events unfolding in Ukraine, where the US was caught red handed engineering the regime change that destabilized the country and forced Russia to act, show a clear intent to set the world against Putin’s Russia and in time, neutralize Russia as a strategic threat.

So the only revelation from my breakfast four years ago remaining to be confirmed is for the next big war to envelope the world. Per the events in Ukraine, the foundations of that war have likely already been set. Before I get to that, however, a quick but relevant detour is required.

The Nature of Complex Systems

Last week the semiannual Owner’s & Guests event took place here at La Estancia de Cafayate. As part of the weeklong gathering, a conference was held featuring residents speaking on topics they are experts on.
Among those residents is a nuclear-energy engineer who spoke on the fragility of the US power grid, the most complex energy transmission system in the world.
He went into great detail about the “defense-in-depth” controls, backups, and overrides built into the system to ensure the grid won’t—in fact, can’t—fail. Yet periodically, it still does.

How? First and foremost, the engineer explained, there is a fundamental principle that holds that the more complex a system is, the more likely it is to fail. As a consequence, despite thousands of very bright people armed with massive budgets and a clear mandate to keep the transmission lines humming, there is essentially nothing they can do to actually prevent some unforeseen, and unforeseeable, event from taking the whole complex system down.

Case in point: in 2003 one of the largest power outages in history occurred. 508 large power generators were knocked out, leaving 55 million people in North America without power for upward of 24 hours. The cause? A software defect in an alarm system in an Ohio control center.

I mention this in the context of this article because, as complex as the U.S. power grid is, it is nothing compared to the complexities involved with long-term military strategic planning. This complexity is the result of many factors, including:

• The challenges of identifying potential adversaries and threats many years, even a decade or more, into the future.

• New and evolving technologies. It is a truism that the military is always fighting the last war: by the time the military machine spins up to build and deploy a new technology, it is often already obsolete.

• The entrenched bureaucracies, headed by mere mortals with strong biases. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy and vice versa.

• The unsteady influences of a political class always quick to react with policy shifts to the latest dire news or purported outrage.

• The media, a constant source of hysteria making headlines masquerading as news. And let’s not overlook the media’s role as active agents of the entrenched bureaucratic interests. In one now largely forgotten case, Operation Mockingbird, the CIA actually infiltrated the major US media outlets, specifically to influence public opinion.
  
  All you need to do to understand the bureaucratic agenda is to take a casual glance at the “news” about current events such as those transpiring in the Ukraine.

• And, most important, human nature. We humans are the ultimate complex system, prone to a literally infinite number of strong opinions, exaggerated fears, mental illnesses, passions, vices, self-destructive tendencies, and stupidity on a biblical scale.

The point is that the average person assumes the powers-that-be actually know what they are doing and would never lead us into disaster, but quoting my breakfast companion, that would be a very poor assumption.

Simply, while mass war on the level of the wholesale slaughter commonplace in the last century is unimaginable to most in the modern context, it is never more than the equivalent of a faulty alarm system away from occurring.

Those history buffs among you will confirm that up until about a week before World War I began, virtually no one in the public, the press, the political class, or even the military had any idea the shooting was about to start. And 99.9% of the people then living had no idea the war was about to begin until after the first shot was fired.

Back to the Present

It is a rare moment in one’s life when the bureaucratic curtain falls away long enough to reveal something approximating The Truth. In my opinion, that’s what I observed over breakfast four years ago. That, right or wrong, the proactive military strategy of the US had been turned toward Russia.
Knowing that and no more, one can only guess what actual measures have been planned and set into motion to defang the Russian bear.

Based on the evidence, however, the events in Ukraine appear to be a bold chess move on the bigger board… and to be fair, a pretty damn effective move at that. The problem for the US and its allies is that on the other side of the table is one Vladimir Putin, self made man, black belt judo master, and former KGB spy master.

And that’s just scratching the surface of this complicated and determined individual. One thing is for sure: if you had to pick your adversary in a global geopolitical contest, you’d probably pick him dead last.
Which brings me to a quick mention of The Colder War, Marin’s book, which was released yesterday.
I mentioned earlier that the book had sucked me in and kept me in pretty much straight through until I finished. One reason is that while you can tell Marin has a great deal of respect for Putin’s capabilities and strategic thinking, he doesn’t shy away from revealing the judo master’s dark side. As you will read (and find quoting to your friends, as I have), it is a very dark side.

But the story is so much bigger than that, and Marin does a very good job of explaining the increasingly hostile competition between the US and Russia and the seismic economic consequences that will affect us all as the “Colder War” heats up.

Before signing off for now, I want to add that it is not Marin’s contention that the Colder War will devolve into an actual shooting war. In my view, however, due to the complexities discussed above, you can’t dismiss a military confrontation, even one involving nukes. Every complex system ultimately fails, and the more the US pushes in on Putin’s Russia, the more likely such a failure is to occur.

I recommend Marin’s book, The Colder War; here is the link.

We’ll leave the lights on down here in Cafayate.

Casey Research partner David Galland lives in La Estancia de Cafayate (www.LaEst.com).

The article Breakfast with a Lord of War was originally published at casey research.com.

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