Jeff Rubin's Contributions

Tick, tick, tick. The countdown to another rail accident is already on. A 90-car derailment last week in Alabama is only the latest in a series of train wrecks unfolding across North America. The next one, as promised by a dangerous combination of lax regulations and booming traffic, is just around the bend.

Critics of TransCanada’s Keystone XL project often argue that Canada should reap the full benefits of its natural resources, rather than exporting its petroleum riches south of the border. Head to the U.S. and...

To the relief of borrowers around the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board is holding off on tapering its bond-buying program.

Buy land, advised Mark Twain, because, as the punch line goes, they ain’t making any more of it. Fast forward to 2013 and that advice, as a look at prices for farmland shows, seems as prescient as ever.

Is the Middle East about to deliver another oil shock to the global economy? The U.S. military has targets picked out in Syria and President Obama is trying to convince Congress that America needs to intervene.

Canadian drivers may think that TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, which will allow Alberta to ramp up oil sands production while boosting the flow of oil to eastern Canada, will translate into lower pump prices. Think again.

It works for oil and natural gas, so why not frack for uranium too? After all, America relies on foreign uranium just like it depends on foreign oil.

In chemistry you quickly discover that oil and water don’t mix. The same is true in the energy industry.

Consider the tale of Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources, two of the largest oil sands producers in Alberta. Outwardly, they may appear quite similar. Each produces hundreds of thousands of barrels a day from the oil sands.

Move over OPEC, North America is about to become a net exporter of oil. At least that’s the supposed good news from the International Energy Agency’s latest outlook. According to the IEA, the drilling boom for shale oil is putting US production on track to pass Saudi Arabia.

If we know anything about what makes our economy tick we know this: Feed it cheap oil and it runs like a charm. But keep it rationed to expensive fuel, and growth stops dead.

CNOOC’s blockbuster deal for Nexen, if nothing else, is a stark indication of how far the goal posts have moved not only for Canada’s oil patch, but also for world oil demand. Only four or five years ago, the notion that a state-owned Chinese company could buy—lock, stock and barrel of bitumen—one of Canada’s premier oil names was politically unthinkable.

If you’re under 25 and live in Spain, odds are you’re looking for a job. The latest numbers from Eurostat show 52 percent of the country’s youth are out of work. Such a hopeless employment backdrop makes it no surprise that thousands of Spaniards are taking to the streets to protest the latest round of fiscal austerity measures.

It seems everywhere you look these days economies are gearing down to much slower speeds. Indeed, some economies are already at a standstill (or even moving in reverse) and it’s likely more will soon follow.

Four years ago, when I was still chief economist at CIBC World Markets, I forecast that global economic growth was on pace to send oil prices to $200 a barrel by 2012. In short, the argument was based on a supply-driven analysis that weighed...

With Greece on the verge of default, we’re about to learn how little has really changed since governments around the world wrote the last round of bail out checks to prop up failing financial institutions.