Where's the beef? Hicks on Biz column originally published in Edmonton Sun, Oct. 13, 2012

This column began with the thought of reporting on how the closure of the XL Foods meat-packing plant would be whacking northern Alberta’s rural economy. The plant has partially re-opened, but as of Friday was still not allowed to accept live cattle. Our cattlemen, I figured, had to be reeling.Meat-packing is a nice term for slaughter-houses. That industry has become so concentrated that two plants in southern Alberta, XL in Brooks and Cargill in High River, each normally slaughter 3,500 to 4,000 cattle a day.If Alberta’s slaughter capacity is halved (XL processes a third of all Canadian beef) you can’t get most of your cattle to market.The bottleneck should bump its way up the system. The feedlots fattening young cattle can’t ship to the packing plant. Ranchers can’t sell their calves to the feedlots because the feedlots are full. Prices for feedlot-ready young cattle had dropped by 10% in the past two weeks.There had to be pain and suffering happening in the countryside.With apologies to a handful of big-ti ... Read the rest of entry »

Future bright for natural gas: Hicks Biz in the Edmonton Sun, Sept. 22, 2012

Don’t crack the champagne yet. But if the South African energy giant Sasol goes ahead with its unique GTL (Gas to Liquids) refinery close to Fort Saskatchewan, it’ll be one giant boost to the region. Sasol’s patented technology converts natural gas into diesel fuel. How about $8 billion spent mostly around Edmonton, to get it built? To put that figure in perspective, it’s as much as the entire provincial education budget. How about 5,000 skilled trades workers employed over a three-year build? How about, once operational, 500 permanent skilled jobs? We haven’t seen the possibility of such eye-popping numbers, this close to Edmonton, since the Petro-Can refinery expansion and the final phases of Shell’s Scotford refinery/upgrader. All about the price of gas The caution comes because nothing is a done deal. Sasol’s unique technology depends on the price of natural gas (hereto referred to simply as “gas”) staying down, and the price of oil/diesel sta ... Read the rest of entry »

Let's get the arena deal done: Hicks on Biz, Edmonton Sun, Oct. 6, 2012

So the Katz Group — owner of the Edmonton Oilers NHL hockey team, and operator of the proposed new downtown arena — is back for more. The story, huge headlines three weeks ago, is that our municipally elected councillors were "blindsided" when presented behind closed doors with new, unexpected financial demands from the Katz Group as part of the new arena deal. Daryl Katz last weekend issued a statement in a full-page ad, apologizing for his bull-headedness. Certainly that statement softened down the antagonism. Nobody outside the Katz Group has access to the team's audited financial statements. The club, like all NHL teams, is privately held. Nobody besides Revenue Canada knows how much it does or doesn't make. Daryl Katz will not open his books, even behind closed doors, to city council or its representatives. We are forced to accept, on faith, that the Oilers are a break-even proposition at best. The Forbes business magazine article pegging Oilers profits at $7 million in 2010/11 was nothin ... Read the rest of entry »

Meals are Naanolicious: Weekly Dish column originally published in Edmonton Sun, Sept. 12, 2012

Why didn't anybody think of this before?East Indian (South Asian) cooking is as deeply engrained into Canadian food habits as Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai, arguably more so if you look at the actual number of Indian restaurants in Edmonton — 59 by the Urbanspoon's website count.So why not create a new Canadian street food, combining the popular tastes of India with the style and price of pizza and fries?Which is precisely what Monica Kapur of the New Asian Village restaurant dynasty has done.Naanolicious, in the heart of Old Strathcona close by the Princess Theatre on Whyte Avenue, has great fun tossing together classic Western and South Asian staples.Naan is the delicious, light, slightly leavened Indian flatbread that one finds more and more outside the traditional East Indian setting.In Naanolicious's case, naan serves as a replacement for traditional pizza crust. You want fusion — try the Hawaiian (pineapple and ham), the pepperoni and mushrooms, or the meat lovers naan. You want traditional — Monica has ... Read the rest of entry »

Night of the Living Dead - Klondike Days returns to haunt Edmonton

July 30, 2012: So after a well-publicized vote on what to call Edmonton's annual summer fair - currently under the generic Capital EX- the producer of said event  Northlands has announced the winner. K-Days! K-Days was the abbreviation, the slang-term, for the fair's long-standing name of Klondike Days. The original idea for the Klondike Days theme stemmed was Edmonton's peripheral involvement in the Klondike Gold Rush, as a staging area for one of the toughest ways to get to the Klondike gold rush up north. It came complete with barbershop quartets, men dressed in turn-of-the-century stifling hot vests and suits, ladies in the full Victorian style regalia of dresses. All of which the city was completely bored with by the mid-80s, especially when we really didn't have much historical claim to calling ourselves a Klondike gold rush town. So here's the can of worms that'll be opened with the decision to call Capital EX K-Days. What does K-Days stand for, the visitor will ask. Wel ... Read the rest of entry »

Many Ways to Move Our Oil - Hicks on Biz column from The Edmonton Sun of Sat. March 17, 2012

One way or another, our bitumen (heavy oil) will get to China. There's a myth building up that the proposed but seriously opposed Northern Gateway pipeline is the only option to get oil from the oil sands to Asia.Not true. It's the most practical and likely the cheapest option, heading straight as an arrow from Edmonton through the northern B.C. interior to the port town of Kitimat.Here's the deal.We now produce 2.9 million barrels of oil a day (MBD) in Western Canada, about 60% of that from the oil sands.We can't come close to using that much - 2.1 million barrels are exported, fairly easily at the moment through existing pipelines, 99% of it heading to the Excited States.The source of our wealth? Do the math! At $100 a barrel, that's $210 million a day — or about $75 billion a year.By 2020, only eight years, we'll be up to 3.5 million barrels a day. Of that, 80% will be from the oil sands.The pipelines will get crowded. The last thing we want, as the principal beneficiaries of this thick black gooey stuff, ... Read the rest of entry »

Edmonton isn't getting the credit it deserves - Hicks on Biz column from The Edmonton Sun, originally posted Friday, Feb. 24, 2012

By Graham Hicks ,Edmonton Sun First posted: Friday, February 24, 2012 05:10 PM MST | Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012 05:13 PM MST I’m sick and tired of Edmonton being Canada’s forgotten city. Every time, on every national newscast, it’s about Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. Where’s Edmonton in the national consciousness? Where’s our hustle and bustle? Welcome to Hicks on Biz, the new weekly Edmonton Sun business column with one overriding objective — to let you, and the rest of the world, know that Edmonton is the most dynamic, fastest growing, best-quality-of-life, best-positioned-for-the-future city in Canada. And, if any of our cylinders aren’t firing as they should, constructive commentary will be offered to stay on course. We’ll do this mainly through looking at Edmonton’s economy in cold, hard numbers. Numbers can be manipulated, but they don’t lie. Nothing makes the case for prosperity like the number of jobs, amount ... Read the rest of entry »

Speech to the Northern Alberta Insurance Institute of Canada: "What's In It For You": Nov. 17, 2009

Speech to the Northern Alberta Insurance Institute of Canada, for Nov. 17 commencement exercises, at the Shaw Conference Centre. "Community Involvement: What's in it for you." Thank you so much for this opportunity to be your keynote speaker. It's a pleasure and a privilege to congratulate the latest graduating class of the Northern Alberta Insurance Institute of Canada, adding more letters after their names! My name is Graham Hicks. As a five times a week columnist in the Edmonton Sun, I really have no area of expertise. As a journalist I am one of the last generalists. I know a little about a lot, not a great deal about anything, especially insurance! An inch deep, and a mile wide. But I have had the immense privilege of being paid, for the last 30 years, to be an observer of Edmonton and Edmontonians. And I'd like to think I've gained a few insights into how this town works, what makes it tick. And maybe, just maybe, I can persuade you of the self-interest in my cause. It's my goal to have half of ... Read the rest of entry »