Happy Friday. Our weekly charts are posted at https://aleach.ca/charts.
We’ve got a couple of interesting stores for you today.
First, in response to reader Lance Freeman, I took a look at margins for the Sturgeon refinery for the first time in a while. And, to say the least, they’re high. Record high.
The refinery runs bitumen and produces a diesel-heavy slate, so high diesel prices combined with really high differentials that are depressing the value of bitumen mean the refinery is printing money. Now, these are imputed gross margins, as I don’t have accurate cost data from the refinery nor do I have information on their particular marketing returns, but if they’re not making the most money they’ve ever made, I’d be surprised.
We also take a look at what might have been the first few coal-free minutes in Alberta, but which I think were actually due to a data problem. The one coal plant (yes, only one!) online the morning of November 2nd was Genesee 1, and it seems to have had some sort of malfunction:
I’m guessing it’s just a data blip and not a short-lived outage, since even my amateur engineering suggests this is an unlikely generation pattern for a coal plant.
Finally, a couple of other bits for you today. Youssaf Habib has another story this week on the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) and their conclusion that fossil fuel supply writ large should peak or plateau in the coming decade. That’s a stark change from previous WEO reports and, if history is any indication, they’ll keep revising demand forecasts downward in the years to come.
And, finally, John Kemp had a really interesting chartbook update today on European gas storage. Things are looking a bit better for gas storage as winter sets in for the continent, but I would still expect a much more rapid drawdown that previous years given the lack of import capacity caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Have a great weekend.