topraider

I have XM. Do not count on satalite radio to give you local weather or traffic, that was one of the conditions of Sirius and XM getting a licence in Canada - no local programming. Besides, why would a subscriber in Red Deer, Alberta care about traffic conditions in the GTA? You all get the same stations. Listen to 680AM for free, the traffic comes on every 10 minutes, all day, every day I find myself listening 95% of the time to three stations - 60's music, 70's music, and CNBC (its a audio feed of the US business network). The hockey is also good, they have 7 or eight games on at the same time, and you can see the score on the screen, so youcan do a quick check to see how the Senators are doing, even when you are in Leaf Nation. XM and Sirius are in Merger talks in the US, I imagine the same thing will happen here, so it might not matter which service you choose in the end.

Be careful about those oil investments right now, there's a lot of political risk, and costs are starting to get out of line. The easy money was made 2003-2005. Consider: Alberta reconsidering royalty rates for oil sands projects (now at 1% until outlay is recovered) Federal government is reconsidering write off rules for oil infrastructure costs Wages, and costs of materials (eg steel) have skyrocketed New enviromental rules - e.g. CO2 sequestering and emission caps. Nobody knows what the rules are anymore. Newfoundland is scaring away large oil companies with demands of equity ownership and development timetables Estimated costs of Mackenzie pipeline now at 16 billion. Sounds like it will never happen now. Oil company bashing by Central Canadians is a popular pastime and there is no shortage of politicians willing to pander to this sentiment. In the USA there is even talk about a "windfall profits tax" for the oil companies. Alberta offers political stability, but it is one of the most expensive places to do business in the world. Multinational oil companies look at these increased costs and new rules, recalculate project hurdle rates, and take their business elsewhere. Just last week Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. announced they were putting plans for a heavy oil upgrader on hold. It would cost 6-8 billion. Too much risk right now. Nobody wants to spend the 2 billion plus it costs to build a refinery because of all the red tape, and the risk that the investment will never make a decent return. Ontario desperately needs more refining capacity right now. From the oil company's perspective, it is better to repair the old plants, and close the ones that can't be fixed. It doesn't help that demand for refined fuels is inelastic, meaning that a 10% reduction in supply will result in more than a 10% increase in price. Refiners can make more money by not building more capacity. Historically, refining has been a terrible business to be in, it is only recently that thay have made money.

I generally use 65 lb PP. I can't remember breaking off a fish because I failed to retie. I generally retie once per trip with PP. The one problem I have with PP is that is too supple, so that it wraps around the rod tip on occasion, especially when its wet. Mono doesn't do that, but with mono (say 20 lb trilene XT) it is important to retie more frequently,or you'll bust off fish.

There is a conspiracy all right, but its not what some of you might think.. The oil company conspiracy is - Keep gas prices in Southern Ontario and the GTA low! The oil companies know that raising the prices to where they need to be right now would cause a political firestorm, even though a $1 a litre is what many Canadians from other parts of the country paid before any fire. From afar, Ontarians might appear to be a bunch of whiners. If the price was raises to $1.25 a litre, people would use less, and new supplies would come in from our neighbors, so no shortages would exist. The choice is, cheap gas or shortages. Ontario only refines about 2/3 of the gas it uses. Refineries are dirty and make big messes. Maybe that's Ontario's way of exporting our pollution. We need more refineries, how about a big one in Dan McTeagues riding of Pickering, that way he doesn't have to go as far to do his price gouging investigations.

There is supposed to be a continental market for gasoline - when the gulf storms hit Aug/Sept 2005 and wiped out Louisiana refineries, it created shortages in Ontario, as our gasoline was shipped south to cover USA shortages. We had to pay $1.25 a litre for weeks on end until the gulf refineries were fixed. Now that we have a problem, why isn't gasoline being shipped north from the USA to cover our shortage? Maybe its because prices here are are too low, so nobody wants to bother taking advantage of the arbitrage opportunities that might otherwise exist (buy in USA, sell in Canada). So instead southern Ontario does without. If a refinery fire can wreck things like that, that should be a WARNING - there is no excess capacity in the system. We need more refineries. Governments put up a lot of red tape that makes the cost of building new refineries prohibitive. The environmental assessments alone would take years. No refineries have been built in NA in 30 years. For years and years refiners could not even earn their cost of capital, it was a lousy business. Building new refineries costs billions. And if somebody builds a new one, that could create excess supply, which would wreck margins across the whole industry. And who wants the ugly mess refineries create in their backyard, especially if most of the output gets shipped to other juristictions. And nobody is going to commit billions of capital unless they can ship anywhere (i.e. get the best price) Its a tough issue. And to those who think that Ontarians should pay lower than the world price for its energy, forget it, that would create more problems than it would solve.