potate

I was at a farmer's market here in Calgary remarking at a) how amazing the quality of local greenhouse veggies are and b) sad how quickly everyone forgot about the price gouging of the major grocery chains.

Now, being able to pay a few extra bucks for local farmers market stuff requires having the disposable cash to afford it and a lot of folks are more worried about feeding their kids than shopping as a statement - so no judgment - but it's a shame we've been distracted by Trump as to the way corporations have been killing competition through monopolistic practices.

The provided link is to a directory site and the link dead ends. There seems to be a ton of low effort copy-paste spam from this directory site.

I can understand providing a link to the directory site in one post - but a post about a specific business should provide direct links to the Canadian business in question - not to this directory.

I kinda like pet-chem if we're going to do more upgrading - and sure enough we're seeing activity in the space.

Refineries produce gasoline (for old cars), diesel (for old trucks), and oils (there's alternatives). Refineries are for antiquated tech that were trying to phase out IMO.

Upgrading light ends (methane, ethane, propane, etc) are what I'd be investing in if I was looking at fossil fuels investment. We have LOTS of gas plants sweetening and fractionating that stuff so the product streams are there and the emissions intensity of that end is WAY better than liquids.

Dow is building a huge ethane cracker to produce polyethylene. IPL has the Heartland petrochemical complex that's going to be soaking up immense amounts of propane to produce polypropylene pellets. I haven't checked what Nova is up to lately, but I can promise you they're looking to grow in the space.

I don't love polymers, but we COULD recycle it if we were smart and unlike combustion where everything ends up in the atmosphere, a landfill full of plastic is actually carbon sequestration when you think about it.

Methane (natural gas) is worth approximately nothing at the moment, but coastal LNG exports will help China et al. ween off coal while they continue to build out renewables and Europe needs LNG for similar reasons and timescales.

Source - random internet person

I live and work downtown Calgary in an O&G related field (emissions reduction analysis - it's a frustrating job). I listen to a LOT of anti-Smith diatribes. The UCP mostly gets elected by rural ridings. They have about half of Calgary, and I don't know why they even bother running candidates in Edmonton.

There's a lot similarities to BC actually - BC votes conservative (whatever they call themselves) most places outside of Vancouver and Victoria.

There's even recall campaign talk in Calgary at the moment because people are hoping to force an early election to try and force the UCP out. (abresistance.ca for any Calgary homies who are interested in getting involved)

I think that the scale of investment involved in oil sands development necessitates MUCH longer range planning than relatively short political cycles.

There's may be something to be said maximizing CAPEX when the commodity pricing sucks. Spending pullback from the more boom/bust centric conventional/frac operators reduces competition for trades and key manufacturers.

I think the differentiator at the moment is the lack of predictability. Normally your financial models only have to factor in modest price uncertainty. Right now the tariffs change so quickly that who knows what things will cost. I don't have a clue how you price a project in this environment. I pitty project managers.

Steel plate and pipe is easy to source domestically - especially when the US buyers aren't tying up Evraz capacity. Big inch valves would start to get tricky I think - but it's been over a decade since I was working in that space. Coatings are Dupont and 3M for buried assets - so lots of risk exposure there.

Personally, if I operated any major facilities (fractionation/refineries) I'd be looking at what turnaround/maintenance work I could be pulling forward right now. When oil's booming, you don't want to shut down your money machine to do repairs.

Huh, I thought it was just me that did that - I just assumed everyone else was so much more disciplined than me...

I've got a 5kW array of panels so yea, piddly stuff like charging USB is nothing - it's more the principal of the thing.

My EV charger is definitely the biggie. The system will dynamically adjust charging current in 1A steps to make use of available excess generation. It works pretty well - 16kWh spinning my meter backwards would earn me a whole $1.50 - instead it added ~20% charge to the car.

I know a number of people who got too much buildup from over applying and decided it was crap. My advice was always - be more lazy.

I damn near bankrupted myself to buy a Bertazzoni induction range. Zero regrets. It ain't Canadian but the EU are homies (mostly) and have some damn nice appliances. We have a Bosch dishwasher that was made in Germany and I didn't realize that dishwashers could actually wash dishes until I got it (ten years old and still works beautifully).

Shit's expensive as hell so there's a lot of privilege that goes into my 'damn the cost' strategy and it definitely isn't for everyone.

Try the dry lube - it changed my life. That said, don't over apply - every complaint I've seen is due to over application.

Okay, I'm curious, I'll see what I can find. I just got a made in Canada Razor, shave bar, and brush so I've been down parallel rabbit holes ;)

Naw, I have a super efficient heat pump and my water heater has been on for about ten minutes today. When high demand stuff kicks in my system kills off discretionary loads until I'm not exceeding my production. And this is in Canada...