The Oil Drum

The IEA earlier released a report that said, though not in so many words, that peak oil is near. Then its CEO Claude Mandil gave an interview to Le Monde, in which he said Russia has peaked, and OPEC is not telling the truth about world oil supplies.

S&P and Moody's, Wall Street's preferred rating agencies, changed their approach to the ongoing mortgage malaise by downgrading, or threatening to downgrade, many mortgage-based investment grade bonds. This shift will be felt throughout the credit markets, and there may be much more to come. And the UK is now joining the mortgage mayhem crowd.

No such shift for NAR: they predict US home prices will rebound in 2008, though foreclosures rose 87% and a record number of ARM's will reset this fall.

Meanwhile in Canada, the sovereignty that our government seeks to defend in the Arctic is being undermined at an SPP meeting in Montebello, Quebec.

Canada flexes its muscles in scramble for the Arctic

Mr Harper's message, and the belligerent style in which it was delivered, are a sign that the Arctic, the vast ice-covered ocean around the North Pole, is hotting up - both literally, through global warming, and metaphorically as a political issue. With Canada, Denmark, Russia and the United States all having claims on the region, together with those of Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland, international tension in the region is mounting.

There was no dissembling in Mr Harper's speech. "The ongoing discovery of the north's resource riches, coupled with the potential impact of climate change, has made the region a growing area of interest and concern," he said. As the statement implies, two areas of international competition lie behind the Canadian prime minister's actions. The first is that the Arctic region is rich in natural resources. It is thought to hold up to a quarter of the world's undiscovered reserves of oil and gas, which as the established fields in the Middle East and elsewhere run dry will become increasingly valuable and sought after. There are also known to be major deposits of diamonds, silver, copper, zinc and, potentially, uranium. It also has rich fish stocks.

Desire to exploit these resources has led to tensions with the US over the offshore border between Alaska and Canada, an area known as the "wedge", where one day oil and gas exploration could prove to be lucrative.

Dried-up Arctic ponds evidence of global warming, study says

A University of Alberta scientist has uncovered dramatic evidence of climate change in the Arctic, where ponds that have been part of the landscape for more than 6,000 years are drying up as global warming has nearly doubled the length of the brief northern summer.

World oil production has maxed out: Talisman

Talisman chief executive Jim Buckee has never been one to shy away from controversy.

An astrophysicist, Buckee was one of the first energy industry executives to challenge the precepts of global warming and the subsequent demonization of all greenhouse gas producers -- a position that earned him the ire of the environmental lobby.

An adventurer, he took his company into one of the most controversial oil plays in the world -- Sudan -- believing it was a good thing, financially speaking, for the Calgary-based explorer. Some industry analysts believe that decision earned the company a stock market backlash, even though Talisman exited Sudan with a healthy financial gain over four years ago.

So when Buckee suggests, as he did at Talisman's annual meeting Wednesday, that Peak Oil has arrived, we are not completely surprised -- even if that observation is likely to again land him in the eye of a storm.

Suzuki says Baird's climate plan 'not enough'

Respected environmentalist David Suzuki came out swinging Friday, calling the plan an embarrassment that was more of a sham than a strategy. Suzuki said the government must meet the terms of the Kyoto accord on time -- regardless of expense.

"Mr. Baird, you are the minister of the environment, not the minister of finance," Suzuki told reporters at a press conference. "Your job is to protect the environment."

He said Canada needs to set the example for other countries.

"If we can't do it, why should India or China or all of the other developing nations pay any attention to the issue of emissions reduction?" questioned Suzuki.

Canada must nationalize its oil and gas industry: Quebec accounting professor

Lauzon has been calling for the nationalization of Canada's oil and gas industry over the last several years.

He told a news conference the analysis has shown that major oil companies continue to eliminate their competition by either buying or merging them and most of the profits go to the shareholders rather than investing and building refineries.

"Currently Canada, self-sufficient in oil and gas as the third-largest producer of natural gas and the sixth-largest for oil, has prices imposed on it due to events that happen in Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia," he said.

"Among oil-producing countries, Canada is going the wrong way. It's the only western country to privatize this essential resource, largely to foreign interests," Lauzon said.

Petro-Canada (TSX:PCA) of Calgary was created as a government-owned company during the Trudeau era in response to an oil shortage during the mid-1970s due to a crackdown on supplies by the OPEC oil cartel.

However, subsequent Liberal and Conservative governments have since divested their ownership in Petro-Canada, which remains a major integrated oil company with exploration, production, refining, distribution and retail operations.

Mortgage woes could be 'tip of the iceberg'

For some, the lesson learned is: "buyer beware." But a series of interviews with subprime borrowers, mortgage lenders, appraisers, current and former regulators, and the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development paints a different picture - of a widespread pattern of questionable lending practices and outright fraud that has already sparked a wave of criminal and civil actions against various players in the $10 trillion market for residential mortgages.

Questionable mortgage practices can take on many forms, but the fall into two broad categories:

• Predatory lending. In this case, complex mortgage terms and interest rate risks were not fully explained as required by federal law. The borrower is usually the victim.
• Mortgage fraud. In these cases, often carried out by sophisticated swindlers, the lender is typically the victim.

Trust bounty slips away

Most income trusts that have sold themselves -- since Ottawa decided to increase taxes on these investments to stem tax leakage -- have ended up in the hands of entities that don't pay Canadian taxes.

Twelve income trust deals with a total enterprise value of $7.3-billion, including yesterday's proposed sale of KCP Income Fund, are pending or have closed since the end of October. Nine of these transactions, worth $5.76-billion, are set to end up in the hands of foreign private equity shops, foreign corporations, Canadian private equity or Canadian pension funds -- all outfits that don't pay taxes into Ottawa's coffers. The findings were made by Chris Rankin, an analyst at Canaccord Adams....

...."We're seeing cash flow moving from taxable Canadian investors' hands to offshore investors and non-taxable hands," said Sandy McIntyre, a fund manager at Sentry Select Capital Corp.

Green election talk heats up

The Conservative government has drawn an election battle line after opposition parties massively overhauled its Clean Air Act.

A special Commons committee that finished studying the act yesterday included a provision to punish industrial polluters with heavy fines, and Tory MP Mark Warawa said that could lead to "billions of dollars of new taxes."

The House of Commons adjourns today for a two-week Easter break, and when it returns a vote on the bill amended by the committee dominated by opposition party MPs could spark an election. There is speculation that an election could be called in mid-April for either May 28 or June 4.

Canadian rebirth for wind power

Inside an unremarkable office building on the outskirts of Vancouver, a small team of engineers and marketers is building a technology that will tame the wind.

It is a high-tech battery that looks like a pair of hot-water tanks linked by a twisting network of plastic piping. Each tank is filled with vanadium, an element named after a Norse fertility goddess that could give birth to new possibilities in alternative energy by making wind turbines nearly as reliable as coal-fired electric plants.

First designed by NASA and developed by Vancouver-based VRB Power Systems Inc., the vanadium battery took a major step toward commercial success yesterday after the Irish government released a study showing it could substantially boost profitability at wind farms when the Emerald Isle is looking to inject some of its famous green into its power supply.

LNG beats pipeline

Treating delta gas as an LNG opportunity is much more attractive than the Mackenzie pipeline option. Maybe the big giants behind the backers -- Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, and Royal Dutch Shell -- fear upsetting their global petroleum, natural gas and LNG apple carts by allowing their Canadian subsidiaries to start playing for the first time outside their Canadian sand boxes. It may be an intolerable horror for these multi-nationals to see delta LNG "washing up" at global LNG terminals, and competing with their own non-Canadian LNG delivered to U.S. and overseas LNG-terminals. Or might marketing delta gas globally snatch away the currently dominant fuel, gas, from the ravenous appetites of oilsands gas-guzzlers, forcing them to consider fuel options other than gas, and risking further delays, because they are also primary holders of Alberta oilsands leases.