Facts are Stubborn Things
Drink the long, Drink the long draught
Drink the long draught for the Big Priest
Check the record, Check the record
Check the guy’s track record
He is not Appreciated
So drink the long, Drink the long draught
Drink the long draught for the Hip Priest
– The Fall
There’s been some good stories about oil recently. Notice despite all marketing and PR practiced by our corporate media, propaganda it was once called, reality leaks through here and there. “Facts are stubborn things,” so said the great instigator of revolution, John Adams. But those were the days when revolutionaries walked the American landscape – a long long time ago. After all what would people rebel against today? Certainly not oil, it’s inanimate. Besides, oil defines the beneficence and noblesse oblige of modernity, coming with its own aristocracies such as the House of Saud, amongst others. So, it’s important to understand a little oil reality.
First, the International Energy Agency, despite its European address, the IEA was founded by none other than America’s greatest practitioner of modern realpolitik – blut, eisen, und oil, Mr. Kissinger, the IEA “sounded the alarm about a potential oil supply crunch and higher prices.” The IEA states it was wrong about American oil shale calling it “a surge, rather than revolution.” You know, kind of like Iraq.
To drive the point home, today the FT has a piece by Mohammad Al Sabban, “a professor of economics at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and a former senior adviser to the Saudi oil minister.” Mr Sabban says, “for the production of tight oil to continue at increasing rates, the industry must overcome environmental challenges. According to the 2012 report from the US Environmental Protection Agency, fracking produced 280bn gallons of toxic wastewater, 45,000 tons of air pollution and 100m metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent global warming pollution,” thus, “Saudi Arabia will continue to be the most influential energy producer for years to come because of its record of moderate pricing and as the most dependable, secure source of oil.” My there’s humor here a plenty, but lets look at the leakage of fact, most importantly the need for water in fracking.
The AP has a story about how the oil industry is learning to “recycle” its fracking waste water. The AP writes,
And then comes the hardest fact,
First, the International Energy Agency, despite its European address, the IEA was founded by none other than America’s greatest practitioner of modern realpolitik – blut, eisen, und oil, Mr. Kissinger, the IEA “sounded the alarm about a potential oil supply crunch and higher prices.” The IEA states it was wrong about American oil shale calling it “a surge, rather than revolution.” You know, kind of like Iraq.
To drive the point home, today the FT has a piece by Mohammad Al Sabban, “a professor of economics at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and a former senior adviser to the Saudi oil minister.” Mr Sabban says, “for the production of tight oil to continue at increasing rates, the industry must overcome environmental challenges. According to the 2012 report from the US Environmental Protection Agency, fracking produced 280bn gallons of toxic wastewater, 45,000 tons of air pollution and 100m metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent global warming pollution,” thus, “Saudi Arabia will continue to be the most influential energy producer for years to come because of its record of moderate pricing and as the most dependable, secure source of oil.” My there’s humor here a plenty, but lets look at the leakage of fact, most importantly the need for water in fracking.
The AP has a story about how the oil industry is learning to “recycle” its fracking waste water. The AP writes,
“Fracking operations require millions of gallons of relatively clean water. Each time a well is drilled, about 20 percent of the water eventually re-emerges, but it is packed with contaminants from drilling chemicals and heavy metals picked up when the water hits oil. Until recently, that water was dumped as waste, often into deep injection wells.”
I guess that’s a “recycling landfill,” call it American environmentalism.“Many companies, each using slightly different technology and methods, are offering ways of reusing that water. Some, like Schlosberg’s Water Rescue Services, statically charge the water so that waste particles separate and fall to the bottom. Those solids are taken to a landfill, leaving more than 95 percent of the water clean enough to be reused for fracking.”
Another oil fact I found while recently in Chicago for the funeral of James Ambrose Costello - he will be eternally missed. The Tribune has a piece about “a dusty byproduct of the Canadian oil boom piling up in huge black mountains along the Calumet River.” They add,
“By the end of the year, the oil giant BP is expected to complete work on new equipment that will more than triple the amount of petroleum coke produced by its Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan. The project will turn the sprawling Indiana plant into the world’s second-largest source of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke, and Chicago into one of the biggest repositories of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste.”
“BP this week confirmed that all of its petcoke is shipped a few miles across the state border to sites in the East Side and South Deering neighborhoods. Residents say black clouds of dust blow off uncovered piles of petcoke and coal in the area so frequently that people are forced to keep their children inside with the windows closed.”
This coke is then “recycled” by selling it to the Chinese, who burn it, adding to their already putrid air.
So, that’s a pretty good number of facts about oil in 2013. It’s getting heavier and heavier and more and more expensive, while the Sauds remain the key link in the global oil pipeline, which is lucky that they’re our #1 ally in the Mid-East, despite the rarely recognized fact of their propensity to blowing things up, including much of the Middle East, but how would any good American find fault with that? And of course, it must be added the great public service provided by the American taxpayer of making sure oil flows through the Gulf to the world, no matter how great the fires raging around Gulf shores. These costs are never accounted in the cost of oil, the American budget, or anywhere else. But why should they? 9.9 out of 10 economists will tell you the price of oil has nothing to do with the health of the global economy or an international money system built on cheap oil. Phew, and they want you to take them seriously about anything else.
Facts are stubborn things.
So, that’s a pretty good number of facts about oil in 2013. It’s getting heavier and heavier and more and more expensive, while the Sauds remain the key link in the global oil pipeline, which is lucky that they’re our #1 ally in the Mid-East, despite the rarely recognized fact of their propensity to blowing things up, including much of the Middle East, but how would any good American find fault with that? And of course, it must be added the great public service provided by the American taxpayer of making sure oil flows through the Gulf to the world, no matter how great the fires raging around Gulf shores. These costs are never accounted in the cost of oil, the American budget, or anywhere else. But why should they? 9.9 out of 10 economists will tell you the price of oil has nothing to do with the health of the global economy or an international money system built on cheap oil. Phew, and they want you to take them seriously about anything else.
Facts are stubborn things.