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Uncategorized posts
Why the drop in world oil prices will ultimately benefit Alberta.
The price of world oil — hovering on either side of $100 US a barrel since 2011 — has dramatically slipped in the past few weeks, down to $82 a barrel and still dropping.
The anti-fossil-fuel crusaders will dance with glee – see, see, the world doesn’t need you, you big bad Earth-destroyers!
The media loves those commentators who, sagely rubbing their goatees, predict gloom and doom. They have about the same credibility as the goatee-stroking political scientists who never get it right come voting day.
The analysts I respect — Peter Terzakian, Michael Dunn, Ron Hiebert, Andrew Leach, Todd Hirsch — say quite the opposite. The only serious pain in this situation will be less money coming into the provincial treasury than was planned from oil and gas royalties, and that will be partially offset in any case.
The sum total of all the moving parts of the oil patch?
Lower oil prices will ...
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Lazia
10200 102 Ave. (main floor, Edmonton City Centre West)
780-990-0188
Lazia.ca
Food: 4 of 5 suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 suns
Dinner for two, excluding drink, taxes and tip: Basic, $30, loaded $50
Restaurateur Richard Lim (Lazia, Wildflower Grill, East) presents himself as an “aw shucks” kinda guy, scratching his head about the restaurant industry, professing ignorance of modern trends.
Don’t let him fool you. This is one sharp hospitality mind that’s always several steps ahead, not behind, the competition.
Lim’s one of the few in the trade to fully understand why good restaurants “redefine” themselves every few years, to stay fresh, lively and modern. He opened the near-iconic Asian fusion Lazia, believe it or not, 12 years ago. Its menu has been overhauled four or five times since.
Lim, general manager Jim Dymond and head chef Jimmy Ng invited Edmonton’s food bloggers and reviewers to a panoramic culinary to ...
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The challenge is just how far there is to go.
The mayors and bureaucrats from the 24 municipalities making up Metro Edmonton’s Capital Region Board (CRB) could slap on another’s backs and congratulate themselves at the recent CRB closed-door “Economic Development Summit.”
They’d come a long way from the day former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel stormed out of planning session of its toothless predecessor, from the time ex-premier Ed Stelmach told the mayors either they got their regional act together, or the province would do it for them.
Then the first speaker up poured a Niagara Falls of cold water on the parade.
The speaker was the only Canadian on the global-elite 28-person “Site Selectors’ Guild” — the world’s top consultants when it comes to multi-national corporations deciding where and when to build new facilities.
He’s the Canadian-based expert, and Greater Edmonton wasn’t even on his radar.
He’d ...
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Farrow Sandwiches
8422-109 St.
780-757-4160
farrowsandwiches.ca
7 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Tuesdays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 Suns
Subway Sandwiches and Salads
100 outlets in Metropolitan Edmonton
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: not applicable
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Anybody can make a sandwich.
Bread on the bottom, bread on top, stuff inbetween … no muss, no fuss, no cutlery, no plates.
But to make a great sandwich, there’s the rub.
The Weekly Dish looks at two excellent sandwich shops. One is unique, gourmet if you like, the other has 100 outlets in Metro Edmonton.
The giant, of course, is the amazing Subway franchise, the biggest chain in the world with 42,000 Subways world-wide.
The other is Farrow Sandwiches, a cute little shop tucked in beside (and physically linked) to the Three Boars restaurant on 109 Street north of Whyte Avenue. Farrow is all about original sandwiches named by somebody with a vivid imagin ...
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There’s an expectation in writing a business column that every story should be centred on a corporate entity with an organizational structure, a CEO, employees, present and future products and/or services. That every business worth its salt should be formally structured, its primary purpose being the creation of new wealth, especially for its shareholders.
The problem with this default approach is it overlooks the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of entrepreneurially aware, highly talented individuals in Metro Edmonton who choose not to work within corporate structures, individuals whose career paths are convoluted, unique, specialized and general all at the same time.
M5 Special Services Ltd. shares its world headquarters in the garage of a Meadowlark bungalow with two armoured vehicles and a small machine shop.
M5 is Don Wright – president, head researcher, millwright and bottle-washer. M5 ain’t nobody else but Don.
From a childhood fascination for World War II military wirel ...
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Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse
9990 Jasper Ave.
780 990 0123
ruthchrisalberta.ca
11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Sundays - dinner only
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two: Date Night Wednesdays - $99; Sunday Traditional menu, $78
Stop the presses! Hold the phone! Big news breaking!
A multi-course, great steak dinner can be had at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse without breaking the bank. Would you believe $50 per person with wine, $39 without?
You just have to pick your times and go for the “value” meals, “Date Night” for two on Wednesdays, or the Sunday Night Traditional.
Ruth’s Chris, at Jasper and 100 Street, is high-end. Ruth’s Chris is America’s most famous top-of-the-line steakhouse chain. The décor is classical — high ceilings, beautiful globe lighting, fancy thick curtains, carpeting everywhere. A noisy, all glass/tile/blond-wood bistro, this is not.
Normally, ...
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If there's a looming transportation crisis for Alberta oil, why have Suncor and its partners committed $10 billion to the new Fort Hills oilsands project?
Why is Exxon-Imperial Oil full speed ahead on its $8.9 billion expansion of Kearl Lake, even as Phase I is just getting up to speed?
Let's not be stupid. Nobody puts that kind of money into any business, without 100% certainty the product will get to market.
Yet we keep hearing, time after time, that without new pipelines west (Northern Gateway) and south (Keystone XL), much of Alberta's oil will be trapped with no way out.
Here's the reality, as explained to me by a few veterans of the oil transport business.
Oil transport is a three-legged stool - existing pipelines, future pipelines and rail. You wouldn't want to sit on this stool, because it's constantly shifting. Each leg can be growing, or shrinking, or staying put.
Today, about 3.5 million barrels of oil (1.9 million from the oilsands) moves out of Alberta every day, just about all ...
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Daravara
10713 124 St.
587-520-4980
(Facebook)
Weekdays: 11:30 a.m. to late
Weekends: 11 a.m. to late
Sunday brunch
Closed Mondays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, just food — basic $20, loaded $30
It’s an intriguing notion.
Of how much more is a chef capable, before getting too far ahead of the customers?
Can a chef continue to improve … or is she/he already at the limits of her/his own creativity and proficiency?
Daravara is a new-ish (since February) self-described neighbourhood pub on the exploding 124 Street restaurant scene.
But it’s more than a pub, especially in the food department.
Chef and partner Shane Loiselle has impressive credentials. He’s devised a comfort food menu that includes a chef’s touch on traditional pub grub, plus unusual dishes such as a BBQ kale salad, beans on toast, and confit duck taco.
The problem on our visit was an inconsistency ...
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Daravara
10713 124 St.
587-520-4980
(Facebook)
Weekdays: 11:30 a.m. to late
Weekends: 11 a.m. to late
Sunday brunch
Closed Mondays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, just food — basic $20, loaded $30
It’s an intriguing notion.
Of how much more is a chef capable, before getting too far ahead of the customers?
Can a chef continue to improve … or is she/he already at the limits of her/his own creativity and proficiency?
Daravara is a new-ish (since February) self-described neighbourhood pub on the exploding 124 Street restaurant scene.
But it’s more than a pub, especially in the food department.
Chef and partner Shane Loiselle has impressive credentials. He’s devised a comfort food menu that includes a chef’s touch on traditional pub grub, plus unusual dishes such as a BBQ kale salad, beans on toast, and confit duck taco.
The problem on our visit was an inconsistency ...
Read the rest of entry »
Alberta Venture Magazine’s September edition contains its annual Top 250 list of Alberta’s biggest companies and, as usual, it makes for fascinating comparisons.
The list demonstrates, more than ever, how Edmonton in the ‘50s and ’60s allowed the corporate side of the resource industry sector that surrounds us to slip away to Calgary.
Fifty-nine of of the top 100 companies within Venture Magazine’s Top 250 companies, (as measured by gross 2013 revenues), are in the resource industries sector. Just two biggies, Weatherford Canada (61st, $1.3 billion) and North American Energy Partners (95th, $470 million) are based in Edmonton.
The rest – all 57 of the Top 100, including nine of the top 10 - are in Calgary.
Of the top 100 companies, 15 are headquartered in Edmonton, 81 in Calgary, about a 6:1 ratio. Strip out resource industry companies, however, and you have 15 in Edmonton and 26 in Calgary, offering a more comforting 1.8:1 ratio.
It’s long been recogni ...
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