Wanted: more consumer spending; not wanted: more fossil fuel sob stories. Also wanted in the auto industry: a better roadmap to greener pastures; wanted everywhere else: more money.
Consumers: get happy, the economy needs you
A consumer optimism deficit reared its head this week in North America with news from RBC Economics that U.S. consumer confidence had taken a turn for the worse, dropping 5.0 points to 97.6 in October from September’s 102.6. Consumers, it appears, were concerned about job prospects, labour market conditions and other trifles.
A shortage of reasons to be cheerful among the masses is not good news for a highly leveraged quantitative easing addicted global economy that CIBC World Markets research noted is increasingly reliant on consumer spending to do the heavy lifting.
Ailing oil blues
But long faces along your street and in your kitchen this week were nothing compared with bottom-line angst in oil industry boardrooms as the Wall Street Journal reported that the world’s four largest oil companies – BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell – posted a combined cash flow deficit of US$20 billion in 2015’s first six months. Not good for Big Oil outlooks; less good still for investor retirement prospects and pension plans all over the globe.
Closer to home, the Daily Oil Bulletin reported that Royal Dutch Shell plc shelved its 80,000 barrels-per-day Carmon Creek project in northwestern Alberta, absorbing a $2 billion hit in the process. Among the reasons for the decision, according to a company statement, “… current uncertainties, including the lack of infrastructure to move Canadian crude oil to global commodity markets."
Another victory for the no-Canadian-energy-abroad forces.
Look, ma, no driver
With oil and its fossil fuel brethren taking on water in the marketplace and taking it on the chin in the court of public opinion, who and what is going to drive your next vehicle?
Probably not you or any other human.
Word on the street is driverless. And renewable.
Not all good words, however.
According to a Reuters story , the looming incursion by Apple and Google into the highly lucrative but troubled global auto sector with driverless cars and new-age automobile ownership and operating philosophies could signal the end of “cheap and cheerful cars like the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla” as upstart competition squeezes auto manufacturing majors into being lower-caste parts suppliers for high-rolling tech giants.
Seeing the green light ahead, the auto big boys, meanwhile, are amping up driverless car prototypes and rekindling flirtations with internal combustion engine options.
Dispatch from the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show: both Honda and Toyota are developing hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles.
Wait a minute, wasn’t that on the to-do list of Vancouver-based fuel-cell pioneer Ballard Power Systems?
That it was, but the company that began life 36 years ago in a small North Vancouver warehouse, and once boasted a stock price in the $192 range, was obviously far too ahead of its time.
The one-time portable green energy pioneer started out pursuing the holy grail of emission-free automobiles but lost the map to the hydrogen highway and has since focused on pursuing assorted milestones and – for Ballard – the even more elusive holy grail of profitability. Maybe next year.
More on Ballard in BIV’s upcoming print edition.
Money matters, baby
But in the end, it’s a matter of money. This week’s richest person in China, Wang Jianlin, packing a fortune calculated at more than Iceland’s GDP, summed up that sentiment in a Telegraph article by saying, “It’s good to have.” Money that is.
As another financially savvy person once said, it’s better than not having any – which is where a lot of investors might be if the fossil fuel bus rolls over too many more economic cliffs.
