BigUglyWorld #5 - WalMart Oil (April 6, 2004)
Band:
We've just had a gig a few nights before (not our best) and we're looking at a few practices and some new music in the pipe, so those who see us will soon hear new songs of twisted misgivings.
Me:
Whatever sick bastard thought up daylight savigs time needs to be hung by his nose hairs.
The World Outside:
I've been listening to Jacob's Ladder by Chumbawamba, and it nicely talks about the world outside today. If you're curious, give it a listen.
Meat:
I wound up with the title of this posting almost entirely by accident. I've been thinking about the state of oil and gas, and The Dongo and I were discussing a little bit, and the notion of WalMart oil sort of pulled itself up from the conversation. To that end, a big hand must go to Dongo for this particular BigUglyWorld.
The state of the world when it comes to oil and gas is this: There's a whole lot of it. I know, it's not really kosher to admit the fact that this particular dying resource isn't as dying as we'd like it to be, but we're talking facts here. I'm all for alternative power sources and finding ways to harness more natural energy streams, from the sun to the winds. But today, right now, there is oil and gas.
I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It's a city that's almost entirely driven by the oil and gas dollar. Lots of multinational oil and gas companies have head offices right here. Most of the people above the age of 18 who live here will know the approximate price of a barrel of oil if asked. It's always been the driver on our economy, and it will for a long time coming.
Lately, we've been talking about things like Oil Sands, which are quite a lot different than your typical oil deposits in that they are in this loose sand stuff and require a completely different method to extract the oil. I'm in no way an expert on the process, but I do know that it's costly. It wasn't done for ages simply because it was cost preventative. Even now, the costs of getting the oil out of the sand are quite high in comparison to traditional drilling systems.
But the truth is that we've got huge untapped resources of oil between things like the oil sands, the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, and the Canadian Shield. These are all areas where oil is harder to get, and the cost of extraction goes up. We still drill in these areas and we still work on more efficient ways to get the oil out of the ground, but we get most of our oil from OPEC countries.
Now, whether you like OPEC or not, they're a fact of oily gassy life. They set the prices, they control the flow, and they essentially have us by the short and curlies. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq have tremendous oil and gas deposits to work with, and through shrewd control of the market, they essentially set the price of oil. And that means that our money gets traded to the wealthy elite of these countries in exchange for access to the oil.
Take Saudi Arabia. Sure, they're our allies. They love the west. They're close personal friends of the Bush family. But if I'm not mistaken, all of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudis, weren't they? In fact, Saudi Arabia is a tyranny of the minority, with the vast majority not being quite as USA-IS-A-OK. And a lot of people believe that the people who most hate the west and are most likely to wage a terror war are largely funded by these rich oil and gas types.
But they give us oil cheap.
By comparison, the price of a barrel of delicious OPEC oil is quite a bit less than that of a barrel taken from the oil sands. So rather than supporting local industry that operates (at least within our borders) in a relatively ethical manner, we are content to funnel however many billion dollars a year into the hands of people who then use that money to kill us. And why? Because it's cheaper.
This is the same as the attitude we take when we buy Nike or Gap products that we know were manufactured in sweat shops but you just can't beat that WalMart price. This is the attitude we take when we allow marketing agencies to sell text books to our schools that use product placement throughout rather than letting our taxes increase to fix a system that needs fixing. This is the attitude that happens when young white families buy new white houses in new white communities and let the inner cities fall.
We don't care about the ramifications. We want that extra few bucks in our pocket. Who cares about terrorism, sweat shops, global warming, urban sprawl, corporate control of foreign governments, Jesus in the workplace, or genocide. All we care about is saving a couple of bucks on the ticket price.
So that's what I mean by WalMart Oil. It's not so much about oil and gas, it's about our need at nearly every level to look beyond even our own best interests and focus on the short term bottom line. That sort of thinking is going to destroy us. But at least we'll have nice stuff.
View the BigUglyWorld Archive for more.