Vincent Lauerman

Vincent Lauerman is president of Geopolitics Central, a Calgary-based energy consultancy. He has spent the majority of his three-decade career working as a global energy analyst, specializing on oil markets. He has also worked as a manager of energy economists, policy analysts and reporters, and as a private macro-speculator. He began his career with the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission in the mid-1980s, having graduated with a masters degree in economics from the University of Alberta, and has worked in Calgary, New York and Tokyo.

  • Civil War In The Oilpatch And A Lougheed Solution

    There would be no civil war in Western Canada’s oilpatch now, if the Alberta government and the province’s oil industry had followed the advice of former Premier Peter Lougheed last decade.

    November 5, 2018, 11:18 AM MST

  • Premier Notley Asleep At Locomotive’s Throttle?

    On Monday afternoon Premier Rachel Notley announced the province of Alberta will be presenting a business plan to the federal government by early next week outlining several strategies — including getting the feds to invest in locomotives and tanker cars — to support the rapid ramp up of crude-by-rail shipments as a short- to medium-term method to quell massive discounts for western Canadian oil.

    October 24, 2018, 7:07 AM MDT

  • Saudi Farce Epitomizes Canada’s Need For Energy Security

    In response to the Saudi government’s diplomatic spat with Canada in early August over some mild criticism about the country’s horrific human rights record under de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), I argued the federal government should maintain the moral high ground and continue to import crude from the kingdom (see Canadian Pawn Takes King In Saudi Game Of Thrones). The Khashoggi affair has caused me to reassess this position and I now believe Canada should stop importing Saudi oil.

    October 22, 2018, 8:15 AM MDT

  • Bravo LNG Canada, Encore, Encore

    Hallelujah! British Columbia finally caught itself an LNG export project. The first in a new global wave, and a nice big one at that.

    October 10, 2018, 6 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Bill C-69 — An Economy And Energy Security Killer

    The Trudeau government’s Bill C-69, currently undergoing second reading by the Senate, is one bad piece of regulatory legislation.

    September 24, 2018, 7:23 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Trump Has Canada Over The NAFTA Barrel, Maybe

    The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sits on a razor’s edge — at least as we’ve known it as a trilateral trade agreement.

    September 7, 2018, 8:34 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Time For Feds To Go Back To Pipeline Drawing Board

    Blame me, kinda.

    August 31, 2018, 6:01 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Time To Secure Canada’s Oil Security

    The prominent Calgary-based energy analyst Peter Tertzakian was correct to raise Canadian oil security as a serious issue and recommend construction of a west-east pipeline to alleviate this threat in recent interviews.

    August 27, 2018, 7:51 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Canadian Pawn Takes King In Saudi Game of Thrones

    Kudos to the Trudeau government for standing up to Saudi Arabian blackmail. Thousands upon thousands of Canadians paid the ultimate price during the two world wars to protect democracy and human rights, and the least our generation can do is suffer minor economic inconvenience to stand up to the repressive Saudi regime.

    August 9, 2018, 7:44 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Three Scenarios For A Strait Of Hormuz Closure

    The rhetoric has been flying this week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Trump as much as threatened nuclear annihilation on the Islamic Republic in a caps filled Tweet in response to Rouhani telling a gathering of diplomats in Tehran that war with Iran would be “the mother of all wars.” The U.S. president chose to ignore the second part of the Iranian president’s sentence in which he added “… and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace.”

    July 26, 2018, 7:44 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Misguided Output Forecasts Harm Canadian Oilpatch

    The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) released the 2018 edition of its Crude Oil Forecast, Markets and Transportation report last month. It is a very useful report in some ways, but unfortunately the crude forecasts in these reports have long suffered from myopia.

    July 16, 2018, 7:58 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Crude Oil Prices To The Stratosphere?

    There is a damned good reason international benchmark crude prices have been rocketing higher since so-called OPEC+ —  the 14 OPEC members and 10 non-OPEC countries restricting crude production since the beginning of 2017 —  agreed to raise output on June 22: a potential supply crunch late this year or early next year due to yet another misguided policy by U.S. President Donald Trump.

    July 3, 2018, 9:04 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Throw Mexico, Not Oil Industry, Under Trump Trade Bus

    There may be more prominent targets in U.S. President Donald Trump’s multi-front trade war, such as China and the European Union, but Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have recently been the primary recipients of Trump administration vitriol.  

    June 25, 2018, 7 AM MDT

  • Analysis: The Feds Ride To TMX’s Rescue

    British Colombia’s Premier John Horgan, environmentalist-extraordinaire Tzeporah Berman, the other leaders of the anti-Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) movement and their minions have lost the pipeline war.

    May 30, 2018, 7:36 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Last Chance Gas For B.C. LNG

    There finally appears to be light at the end the tunnel for British Columbia’s fledgling LNG industry, and it’s not a bitumen-laden unit train.

    May 28, 2018, 6 AM MDT

  • Analysis: The Shocking Sanity Of Saudi Arabia’s $100 Crude Target

    The goalposts for international crude prices appear to have moved yet again, with Reuters reporting in mid-April that Saudi Arabia is now targeting US$80/bbl-$100/bbl.

    May 7, 2018, 8:48 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Alberta’s Export Ban A Bad Idea

    It was an interesting weekend.

    April 24, 2018, 7:59 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Alberta Should Let Feds Lead On TMX Ultimatum

    The CEO of Kinder Morgan Steve Kean said investment in the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project (TMX) “may be untenable for a private party to undertake” during his company’s first quarter earnings call on April 18.

    April 20, 2018, 10:18 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Crude Prices To Strengthen Through Next Year

    International benchmark crude prices played out basically as expected by Geopolitics Central (GPC) in the first quarter of the year, with a few interesting twists on the market fundamentals front and growing signs of ongoing Russia-OPEC co-operation encouraging us to maintain our current short-term outlook.

    April 9, 2018, 6 AM MDT

  • Analysis: A Trade War Boon for Canadian Oil Industry?

    When I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

    March 22, 2018, 9:29 AM MDT

  • Analysis: Time To Hitch Alberta To LTO Wagon

    It’s time for the Alberta government to think outside the box.

    March 12, 2018, 3:29 AM MDT

  • Analysis: The Future Of OPEC And Oil Prices

    The Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) was born in a time of plenty, prospered over a period of real or perceived scarcity, and will likely die in the distant future as the world shifts away from high-carbon energy resources.

    February 26, 2018, 3:47 AM MST

  • Analysis: How The Feds Can Win The Pipeline War

    The pipeline war between Alberta and British Columbia is getting hot, and it will get a lot hotter in the next few years if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushes through expansion of Kinder Morgan Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline. The legal and regulatory challenges B.C.’s New Democratic Party (NDP)-Green Party government is throwing up against Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) is only the first round of defence, and a relatively weak one at that.

    February 9, 2018, 9:19 AM MST

  • Analysis: A Modest Proposal To End Western Canada’s Railway Pinch

    A new Western Canadian oil pipeline pinch had been widely predicted for the fourth quarter of last year. The corresponding increase in regional oil price differentials was expected to be gradual and moderate, with Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) coming to the rescue of oil shippers, just as they did earlier this decade.

    February 5, 2018, 6 AM MST

  • Analysis: Top Geopolitical Hotspots For Crude Oil Through 2019

    As discussed in our last article — Politics to Continue to Drive Crude Prices Through 2019 — Geopolitics Central (GPC) is bullish on WTI crude prices through 2019 partly because we expect a significant rebound in politically-inspired oil production outages. Rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran should provide a solid base of geopolitical uncertainty, but as of now we do not expect it to lead to a hot war and a massive supply disruption over this period. But there are many more potential sources of disruption to supply, albeit significantly less dramatic, the four most likely ones from our perspective are Iran (new economic sanctions), Libya (election-related violence), Nigeria (militancy in Niger Delta region), and Venezuela (end game).

    January 22, 2018, 6 AM MST

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