{"id":53178,"date":"2020-05-11T10:52:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T15:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53178"},"modified":"2020-05-11T10:52:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T15:52:33","slug":"this-energy-analyst-says-the-oil-sands-are-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53178","title":{"rendered":"This Energy Analyst Says the Oil Sands Are \u2018Done\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/05\/11\/The-Oil-Sands-Are-Done\/\">This Energy Analyst Says the Oil Sands Are \u2018Done\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>COVID-19 is making many bearish about bitumen. Deborah Lawrence\u2019s past pessimism has proven unpopular, and correct.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/05\/10\/deborah-lawrence2.jpg\" alt=\"deborah-lawrence2.jpg\"\/><figcaption>Deborah Lawrence, formerly Deborah Rogers, warned of the shale gas and oil crashes, and called Teck Frontier\u2019s proposed new oil sands mine \u2018uncommercial even at relatively high oil prices\u2019 years before it was cancelled.&nbsp;Photo: submitted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Deborah Lawrence used to be a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch. Over the past decade, the independent economic analyst has developed a reputation for telling oil investors what they don\u2019t want to hear.<a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/05\/11\/The-Oil-Sands-Are-Done\/#series-listview-link\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2009, she started warning that the financial model for shale oil fracking companies doesn\u2019t make any sense. Lawrence began analyzing financial data for Chesapeake Energy after the oil and gas company&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/politics-news\/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-aubrey-mcclendons-gas-boom-231551\/\">began drilling<\/a>&nbsp;near her farm in Texas. She discovered that the company, and many others in the industry, were going through cash and accruing debt at alarming rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think we have a big problem,\u201d she&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/26\/us\/26gas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share\">told a colleague<\/a>&nbsp;at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where she was then an advisory committee member. But finding a larger audience proved difficult. The so-called \u201cshale revolution\u201d was transforming the U.S. into the world\u2019s biggest oil producer and everyone from oil executives to state leaders to Wall Street bankers wanted a piece of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI kept saying, look, \u2018There\u2019s no free cash flow and it keeps deteriorating every year I look at this,\u2019\u201d Lawrence recalled in an interview with The Tyee. So she contacted business outlets like the Wall Street Journal. \u201cI sent them stuff for so long with all the underlying documentation and they were like, \u2018Oh no, shales are gonna save us forever.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Energy Analyst Says the Oil Sands Are \u2018Done\u2019 COVID-19 is making many bearish about bitumen. Deborah Lawrence\u2019s past pessimism has proven unpopular, and correct. Deborah Lawrence used to be a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch. Over the past decade, the independent economic analyst has developed a reputation for telling oil investors what they don\u2019t want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[1082,29684,12878,723,23911],"class_list":["post-53178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-alberta","tag-deborah-lawrence","tag-geoff-dembicki","tag-shale-oil","tag-shale-oil-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53179,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53178\/revisions\/53179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}