The Vancouver Business Thread

[officedweller]

Chevron weighs selling off Western Canadian assets
Emily Lazatin
June 16, 2016 09:21 pm
...
In an email, Spokesperson Adrien Byrne says no official decision has been made to sell, but that the company is soliciting “expressions of interest” for its refining and marketing assets in British Columbia and Alberta.

This means everything but its Lubricants business, along with its interest in the Kitimat LNG project and Canadian upstream assets, could be up for sale.

And potential buyers appear to already be sniffing around. Byers states the company has already received “indications of interest.”
...

http://www.630ched.com/syn/112/193572/chevron-weighs-selling-off-western-canadian-assets


See also:

Chevron looking for potential buyers
Retail gas stations and Burnaby refinery could be for sale

Jennifer Moreau | Burnaby Now
June 16, 2016 04:30 PM

Chevron Canada Ltd. is testing the waters to see if anyone is interested in buying the company’s refining and marketing assets, which means the Burnaby refinery could be up for sale.

Chevron spokesperson Adrien Byrne confirmed the news with the NOW.

“Chevron Canada Ltd. has made a decision to solicit expressions of interest to purchase our refining and marketing assets,” he said. “It’s really scoping (out) the market interest in the assets.”

Those assets include the Burnaby refinery, which is the last large-scale refinery operating on the West Coast, processing 55,000 barrels of oil per day.

According to Byrne, Chevron is soliciting interested potential buyers for the Burnaby refinery, Chevron’s cardlock stations (where commercial vehicles fill up with fuel), Chevron gas stations and marine assets. The move doesn't neccessarily mean Chevron will sell the refinery; the company is just testing the market to see if there are any interested buyers.
...

http://www.burnabynow.com/news/chevron-looking-for-potential-buyers-1.2280982

[WarrenC12]

Pretty impressive stats posted by the CoV today. Dunno how you can claim to be the fastest growing for 5 years, but whatever.

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Pretty impressive stats posted by the CoV today. Dunno how you can claim to be the fastest growing for 5 years, but whatever.

25% of BC's economy is real estate related, which is a insane and dangerous number. Most of that is in the Vancouver region. No one wants to say it but real estate is most of our growth. Once the market changes direction the province and city will be in a recession and unemployment will surge.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by cornholio

25% of BC's economy is real estate related, which is a insane and dangerous number. Most of that is in the Vancouver region. No one wants to say it but real estate is most of our growth. Once the market changes direction the province and city will be in a recession and unemployment will surge.

Do you have some stats to back that up, or is it just your opinion?

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Do you have some stats to back that up, or is it just your opinion?

I expect he is referring to this, although its 18% and not 25%...still too high mind you:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/05/12/bc-real-estate-alberta-oil-economy_n_9938922.html

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by csbvan

I expect he is referring to this, although its 18% and not 25%...still too high mind you:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/05/12/bc-real-estate-alberta-oil-economy_n_9938922.html

Thanks. That will do. It was 25%, 7% is direct construction related which is still counted as part of the real-estate market, like in the US.

[LeftCoaster]

But so much of that is imputed rent, not to mention rises in CRE and industrial which have little to nothing to do with foreign capital inflows.

the 90,000+ jobs being created in Vancouver are actually quite diverse, construction (res and commercial and infrastructure), tourism, tech and digital media etc...

We need to be wary of real estate, but real estate has been a huge portion of our GDP for a long time and things weren't booming like they are now. What we are seeing now is decent growth in real estate combining with strong growth in several other sectors which is causing these red hot numbers.

[LeftCoaster]

Not just tech that is booming right now either:

Film crew crunch sparks exodus of lower-budget productions from Vancouver to other B.C. regions

There’s one simple rule Kathleen Gilbert says the film industry in Victoria can always count on: “when it gets very busy over there [Vancouver], the lower budgets have difficulty,” the commissioner of the Vancouver Island South Film and Media Commission told Business In Vancouver.


“Over the last two weeks we’ve seen a fairly substantial increase in requests for [Victoria] location packages.”

While 2016 isn’t shaping up to be a banner year for Victoria the way 2015 was, when two-dozen productions hit the capital region, Gilbert said the fall and winter will be particularly busy as more productions spill over from the Lower Mainland.

Lori Massini, an entertainment lawyer at Boughton Law, said the ongoing boom in the Vancouver film sector has created a “bizarre exodus” of local producers leaving the Lower Mainland for regions that can support lower-budgeted productions.

“I’ve never seen Vancouver this busy in my entire career,” said Massini, who helps producers with the legal wrangling required for securing locations and crews.

“The challenge facing producers right now is that nobody can hire crew, so if you’re a Canadian producer with a modest budget, you can’t compete with a studio production with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars that’s going to offer local crew more lucrative and long-term employment.”


Jon Summerland, commissioner of the Okanagan Film Commission, said his region’s “bread and butter” has always been the lower to mid-budget productions.

“And my crew has been poached to Vancouver as soon as Vancouver exploded,” he said.

Most producers have been coming to the Okanagan with the expectation they can film the entire production in the Interior, but Summerland said now “more people are kicking tires than showing up.”

Full story at: https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/film-crew-crunch-sparks-exodus-lower-budget-produc/

[casper]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

But so much of that is imputed rent, not to mention rises in CRE and industrial which have little to nothing to do with foreign capital inflows.

.

Imputed rent is such an artificial concept. I don't know why anyone would include it in deterring the health of a regions economy.

[trofirhen]

Trying to synthesize all this together a bit, now that Vancouver is becoming more and more a tech centre, what about Microsoft? Particularly Microsoft Centre for Excellence at PC.
It's great that they have chosen Vancouver, but even such a large company, even in such a hot economic sector, will they be able to hire people with high enough salaries to live here?
Connecting all this to the monster housing prices, will even high-paid tecchies be able to afford the cost of buying / renting in Vancouver? Hope so!
Imagine Microsoft packing up and moving to Calary.

[Hot Rod]

not gonna happen.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod

not gonna happen.

Are you absolutely sure? If so, where is the guarantee that it won't? It's the freakish accomodation prices of any sort that could scare companies away.
I hope I'm wrong.

[Alex Mackinnon]

They want to be within driving distance to Seattle.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by trofirhen

Connecting all this to the monster housing prices, will even high-paid tecchies be able to afford the cost of buying / renting in Vancouver? Hope so!
Imagine Microsoft packing up and moving to Calary.

Haha ya not going to happen. They would move to Toronto far before they moved to Calgary (not sure why Calgary is even a concern), but they're not moving there either... in fact they are talking about moving the bulk of their Toronto operations to Vancouver as well.

Microsoft is looking to expand significantly beyond this latest round of growth, and yes they have the ability and apatite to pay salaries. Outside of the startups most tech firms do.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Haha ya not going to happen. They would move to Toronto far before they moved to Calgary (not sure why Calgary is even a concern), but they're not moving there either... in fact they are talking about moving the bulk of their Toronto operations to Vancouver as well.

Microsoft is looking to expand significantly beyond this latest round of growth, and yes they have the ability and apatite to pay salaries. Outside of the startups most tech firms do.

Good to hear! (especially the part about Toronto)!! Thanks!

[LeftCoaster]

Just to move further on that topic, a BIV article about the rapid growth of the gaming industry over the last few years in Vancouver:

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/battle-gaming-business-vancouver-about-git-gud/

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Just to move further on that topic, a BIV article about the rapid growth of the gaming industry over the last few years in Vancouver:

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/battle-gaming-business-vancouver-about-git-gud/

For the record, that is not really a jounalistic article but essentially a commercial paid for by HQ Vancouver, the provincial government-created organization whose purpose is to promote BC and Vancouver as locations for global corporate headquarters. That does not mean it contains any falsehoods, but it's not a piece of dispassionate, balanced journalism that critically and soberly examines positives and negatives, i.e., the whole truth.

[LeftCoaster]

Definitely, good to point out too. Some interesting stats in there though.

[whatnext]

This is bound to give poor Christy a gas attack. Looks like she'll be heading into the election with zero to show for her LNG utopia promised four years ago.

LNG Canada, a Shell-led consortium that aims to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal on the B.C. coast has for the second time postponed its final investment decision on the US$40-billion project. CEO, Andy Calitz, said the delay is due to low natural gas prices, particularly in Asia, the target market...
http://www.albertaoilmagazine.com/2016/07/shell-delays-lng-decision/

[s211]

Originally Posted by whatnext

This is bound to give poor Christy a gas attack. Looks like she'll be heading into the election with zero to show for her LNG utopia promised four years ago.

Which she also used as a big middle finger to Alberta, as if to say "we don't need your filthy pipelines for economic growth".