Private Equity wants you to have more than one client

A revolution, rather than an evolution, is happening in the natural gas and oil markets in North America and the world. The revolution results from the impact of fracking and horizontal drilling, and the resulting discovery and development of huge, unconventional oil and gas reserves around the world in shale formations.

The US has potentially two Trillion barrels of unconventional oil reserves in shale and other formations, which can be developed, making it the world’s largest oil producer.

This is followed by China at 350 Billion barrels and Israel with 250 billion barrels. These are all as compared to  Saudi Arabia’s current 260 billion barrels of conventional oil. For Canada, it is 179 Billion Barrels.

The recent US and Canada diplomatic slap in the face over the pipeline between the two countries, as reported by MacLean’s, is around the politics of environmentalists, but also rumored to be the large US oil and coal lobby groups pressuring the US government not to allow any competitors into the US market. Canada would be a big threat to these companies. As the Canadian government said, “The pipeline is a no brainer.” Not to the US government though.

Patrick Daniel, CEO Enbridge,  says that most of the transportation is not through a pipeline anyway, but he supports that the pipeline is a no brainer and the delay is a serious issue. Instead, Canada will now be pushing up the Gateway project to do a pipeline to Kitimat, not Prince Rupert. This pipeline will then transport energy for Asia and our geographic position puts Canada geographically closer to the Asian markets than the Middle East, a huge competitive advantage. Daniel said that environmentalists like to "mob the mike" and that other voices need to also make themselves heard. He said that technology companies say they are revolutionizing medicine but he believes energy already did that by making sure the patient got to the doctor. When you look at that reasoning, we do take for granted our transportation and lighting.

Having one client which is Enbridge's current client situation, the USA, would not be liked by a private equity investor. Enbridge and Canada are now being forced by the USA's politicking to look for their next big client. Asia is the next no brainer, but the Vancouver Port is too full so Kitimat needs to be developed. Enbridge says there will be environmental rules in place to ensure only top quality ships are allowed to be accepted. 
Providing energy to Asia is a race.

A recent article in the National Post titled “Democratic Jackpot” highlights the new sources of energy and how it will be an incredible game changer . Most of the finds are in democratic countries – interesting. They will also be coming online within 10 years.

 The game-changer is "unconventional fossil fuels," much of it trapped in shale - rock that often contains oil or gas. In the case of gas, the U.S. is developing so much, so fast in so many places that the domestic price for natural gas has more than halved. Whereas five years ago the U.S. planned to build major terminuses to import gas, it is now becoming a major gas exporter. America's Marcellus Shale formation alone - a natural gas reservoir that lies more than a mile underground beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio - has enough gas to supply the Eastern U.S. for decades.

Europe, though a novice in the unconventional energy game, has already discovered vast amounts. The U.K., in the first shale gas field it drilled earlier this year, discovered a gas deposit close to half the size of Marcellus, enough to fuel the entire British economy for decades. France and Poland have comparable finds; Germany and the Netherlands smaller ones. Europe has also discovered immense amounts of natural gas in the Mediterranean, which Cyprus, Greece and Israel have begun to develop for delivery to the European mainland. Among the Western democracies, Australia, too, has massive amounts of exportable natural gas, as does Canada, Brazil and others in the Americas. As does China and other Asian countries. All told, the International Energy Agency estimates a world store of natural gas sufficient to last 250 years.

A similar tale of unconventional riches is unfolding in oil, where the U.S. has in excess of two trillion barrels, the world's largest store. China comes next, with some 350 billion barrels, followed by Israel's 250 billion barrels, an amount close to Saudi Arabia's 260 billion barrels of conventional oil. Thirty-five other countries, including 15 in Europe, are believed to have lesser amounts of unconventional oil, but they may not remain lesser for long - with each new assessment in recent years, the estimates have climbed with new discoveries.

The cost of developing these unconventional resources, meanwhile, continues to drop. In the case of Israel, which has developed an unusually clean and efficient drilling technology, oil is expected to flow at a cost of US$35 to US$40 per barrel, or less than half today's world oil price of US$90 a barrel.

The diversified democracies of the world - the U.S. and European countries among others - will profit big time from the world's endowment of unconventional oil and gas, partly because many of them will become energy exporters instead of importers and mainly because low energy prices will spur their advanced economies. Not so for today's undiversified, energy-export dependent countries.

Maxime Bernier delights the business owners at the Globe and Mail Small Business Summit

Maxime Bernier blew me away with the government's positive approach to business. He spoke at the Globe and Mail Small Business Summit about how everyone should be grateful to business owners and how hard it is to get past the politics of envy of success.
Never thought I would hear that in Canada.
There is more and I recommend that every business owner sign up on this new website. It is wonderfully easy to use and very practical.

The Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of State (Small Business and Tourism), today announced that BizPaL is becoming a permanent service available to small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners.

“The Government of Canada supports SMEs by putting in place initiatives that enable them and entrepreneurs to continue to grow and create jobs,” said Minister of State Bernier. “BizPaL is a concrete example of an initiative designed to cut through the red tape that small business owners encounter.”

BizPaL is an innovative and cost-effective one-stop online service that provides simplified access to information on permits and licences that entrepreneurs and small business owners need to establish and run their businesses.

This unique partnership among federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments is designed to cut through paperwork burden and red tape. The $3 million in annual funding provided in Budget 2011, the Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, will allow the program to provide even greater value to small businesses through continued expansion and service improvements.

In the coming months, BizPaL will become available to more Canadians as additional municipalities join the program. To date, 11 provinces and territories are participating in BizPaL, with more than 600 municipalities offering the service, making it available to over 57 percent of the Canadian population.

Visit the BizPaL website (www.bizpal.ca) for additional information or to access the websites of participating partners.

We are the 99% - Occupy spreads

Surprisingly, this anti-capitalist protester is not getting a lot of press...

Family Firms Perform Worse Without Professional Management

 Economists have found that family firms that pass the company down to the next generation perform worse than if they had brought in professional management. Freakonomics confirms this view. They report that:

+ Family firms are particularly dominant in less-developed countries, which tend to have weaker markets and rule of law. Here’s Vikas Mehrotra on that point:

In the developed world, you have good contracting environments, a good system of law enforcement, and so on. So, in the developed world, you can hire professional managers and expect a certain, you know, sticking to the contract law, and so on. It’s rather more difficult to have the same kind of adherence to the rule of law in emerging economies. So, in emerging economies, family firms sort of provide a second-best solution to this poorly developed institutional problem.

+ The U.S., despite having many highly visible family firms, is in fact far less enamored of inherited leadership than most other countries; Japan, meanwhile, is an exception, a wealthy country with a lot of handoffs to the next generation — but with a very strange twist.

Photo: Alessio85

+ If the above points are of any interest to you, then you should definitely read this Journal article titled “Culture Built on Family Firms Tests Italy’s Plan for Growth.” Note that it is hard to see what is the chicken and what is the egg — e.g., does the business environment, set by the government and the courts, dictate the proliferation of family firms or does the proliferation of family firms lead to a business environment whose habits are enabled by government and the courts?

Key excerpts:

Italy’s economy today is only about 3% bigger than a decade ago. Many factors have contributed to the country’s stagnation—from its rickety education system to its low rates of employment among women, youths and older workers. But a central reason, say economists, is that its private sector consists mostly of small mom-and-pop businesses that seem unable to grow.

And:

Behind the country’s stunted businesses lie the habits and fears of a long line of family entrepreneurs who cling to control of their companies late into life. Hemmed in by a thicket of regulation and legal restrictions, many of these families have learned to survive by doing business within networks of trusted customers and suppliers, rather than taking risks by dealing with outsiders.

“These firms have less propensity to innovate, engage less in research and development and rarely penetrate emerging markets,” said Mario Draghi, ECB President and former Bank of Italy head, in a recent speech.

And:

Italy’s legal and regulatory environment discourages firms from taking a leap in size, according to recent research. Businesses need an average of 258 days to get the permits they need to open a new warehouse in Italy, compared with 26 days in the U.S., according to the World Bank. And an entrepreneur who goes to court to enforce a contract must wait an average of 1,210 days for a resolution, compared with around 300 days in the U.S. or France.

As a result, entrepreneurs prefer to deal informally with people they know, rather than rely on public institutions if anything goes wrong. Thus they stay small even when they have the chance to grow, says Bank of Italy economist Magda Bianco. “The inefficiency of the court system is a widespread problem,” she says.

How Tom Jenkins tackles the urgency of innovation in Canada

Tom Jenkins is the dynamic founder of OpenText and when you hear his ideas about how to push Canada, you know why he was able to build OpenText in a growth capital starved environment. He has just concluded the Jenkins Report for the government to understand what role it can play in building businesses. I am grateful that he is giving back. Here is his blog post about how Canada can grow in innovation:

In this series, I discussed the urgency behind stimulating innovation in Canada and how, in particular, innovation in digital media boosts productivity which is a key driver for prosperity. In this blog, I’d like to take this conversation to another level to examine how we as Canadians can do this. How can we build an innovation nation? 

1. We need to tell our stories. There is folklore here and it needs to be shared. The Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN) and Canada 3.0 provide platforms for Canadians to tell, share and celebrate our success stories.  Both are laying the foundations for resources for future entrepreneurs, including access to mentors, information about VC funding, success stories, and more. OpenText has facilitated that conversation by powering the CDMN social collaboration platform used during and between Canada 3.0 forums.

Keynote Speech at Canada 3.0, 2011

2. We must shake off a cultural legacy of modesty and an aversion to risk taking.  This calls for a cultural shift. Starting at the elementary school level, we can form strategic programs that encourage future generations to become risk takers, welcome competition, and embrace the unpredictability of entrepreneurship that drives innovation.

3. The time is right to establish and connect communities of practice around innovation. For example, there is a gap in the VC community post dot com meltdown that we as a country need to fill.

4. It’s imperative to continue to invest in business in areas like Research and Development. Along with this investment, we need to introduce the tools and technologies to suppport the new demographic—digital natives—that are entering the workforce. This group will expect to use the same tools in the workplace that they're using at home to access, share, and manage information. Investing in R&D will lead to breakthroughs in business applications of these digital consumer tools, and push Canada to the forefront as a leader in developing breakthrough technologies.

5. Finally, we need to think globally not nationally… all the world is our stage for great accomplishments. It is crucial for Canadian businesses and academic institutions to reframe their perspective to reach beyond North America, and consider themselves competitors in the global economy.