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b"Todd Hirsch Open House\\nWe\\u2019re putting on the coffee\\u2026\\n\\nPlease come and join Todd to chit chat about anything you'd like (economics related, of course).\\n\\nWe hold these coffee chats at Calgary\\u2019s Entrepreneur Centre (almost) every month (when Todd is not out of town speaking). It's your chance to bring up questions or issues that have been on your mind.\\n\\nGrad school friends when the while about the economy it's a big topic on everyone's mind right now in Alberta. There's no question that having service struggled through two years of recession. The question that's on everyone's mind is what comes next for a further twenty seventeen really the question Are things going to prove or turnaround and the answer to that Israel we say away with being a communist good. \\nIt's a bit complicated when we think of what I guess triggered the recession for over there was only really one way in on a change and that was the oil prices went from one hundred seven dollars a barrel down to twenty seven dollars a barrel at the beginning of this year and then having recovered modest but certainly struggling to you know get above fifty or stay above fifty. So it's a challenging price environment for producers promise and that has been the whole reason. \\nIn fact while it is fun to these two sectors years. Tracking the drop in oil price. I think it's a stark reminder of how dependent this problem still is on one simple commodity. But talk a little bit about you know do we need to diversify or how does that happen. You know a little bit but of course we are we remain very dependent on the petroleum crude oil to kill. So twenty fifteen twenty sixteen two consecutive years of contraction and over. This economy. \\nYou have to go all the way back to the one nine hundred eighty S. find a situation that is as serious as this in almost every respect the way you look at the data and then teach what works more hours and I think we will in fact get to a situation where it's as bad as the T.V. spot for a lot of people if you were the work rate the arrow or your kids are without work or you're watching your friends loose or jobs. Absolutely. Meals as bad as the 1980's. \\nEven though statistically it may not be but when it comes to the job market in the labor market that is where people actually connect with what a recession means for them first. So I guess there's two questions. How do we reach the bottom in the energy sector and how do we reach the bottom. You know for this economy for the first question or for the answer to that first question I would say that the worst of the price downturn we believe is close behind us so we don't think we're going to test the oil at twenty seven or thirty years the U.S. benchmark price again not in this cycle. Anyway I mean that who knows in the future but we do think the oil prices are likely to remain in this forty maybe fifty five dollars range. \\nThat said we have to recognize anything is possible. Anything could happen. Two years ago I would not have said it was likely that oil was just thirty dollars a barrel but it. So we have to always keep in mind that you know anything could happen a year from now or even by six months from now we could see oil at thirty dollars we could see that eighty dollars. I don't think those scenarios are very likely Instead our analysis suggests that we're going to see these prices continue to trade trade between about forty five maybe fifty five dollars a barrel. And they are thinking and I'm not I'm not an energy economy so it's not my area of expertise I collect my information from other smart people around me but in our estimation OPEC does not become as morning to factor going forward as the U.S. shale oil or oil. \\nSo although OPEC if they decided once again that they don't that they want to flood the market with well they could push prices back lower hasn't worked out really great for them and in fact I think that's one of the reasons why OPEC has decided to agree to."