Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is spot on: the new American tariffs will affect $1.5 billion of Alberta goods. The new Canadian counter-tariffs will affect $4.8 billion of the provincial economy.

That is not a talking point. It is the arithmetic of an integrated energy market that Ottawa cannot wish away, and Washington already understands. Smith’s warning, circulating widely after her CBC Power & Politics appearance and a clip posted by Stephen Taylor, is blunt: Alberta businesses will be hurt more by Canada’s own counter-tariffs than […]

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Oil Will Find a Way

In Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm delivers one of cinema’s most memorable lines: “Life finds a way.” Nature adapts, persists, and routes around obstacles no matter how carefully the fences are built. In the summer of 2026, crude oil is doing the same thing. Blockades and attacks have choked the Strait of Hormuz and the […]

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Ukraine Hits Lukoil Refinery. How Degraded is the Russian Refinery Capacity?

On the morning of August 21, 2026, Ukrainian drones struck the Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez oil refinery in Russia’s Perm Krai, more than 1,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Thick black smoke rose over the facility, one of Russia’s 10 largest refineries with a design capacity of around 13 million metric tons of crude per year (approximately 262,000 […]

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Will Choking Iran’s Economy End the War, or Are They Too Resilient?

In an August 20, 2026, Bloomberg Opinion column, Javier Blas argued that “choking Iran’s economy is the least bad way to end the war.” Drawing on firsthand observations of sanctions-induced collapse in Iraq, Venezuela, and Cuba—worthless currencies, skyrocketing inflation, and soaring unemployment—Blas noted that pure economic pressure has historically failed to force political change. U.S. […]

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So Iran Closes the Strait of Hormuz, Let’s See What Bessent’s Economic Isolation of Iran Could Look Like

As the Iran-U.S. conflict grinds toward the six-month mark in mid-August 2026, Tehran continues to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz—the critical chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG once flowed—while the United States maintains a naval blockade on Iranian ports and escalates economic pressure. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signaled […]

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