Singled Out

WASHINGTON (AP) — Big Oil is once again being called on the carpet. Senior executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies were to appear before a congressional committee Tuesday where they were likely to find frustrated lawmakers in no mood for small talk.

This article was filed an hour ago.
First off, I love tenses. Here, the future is not certain. "Were to appear." Because it will have happened (or not) by the time this article is read by most, but hasn't yet, and can't be counted on. My children were to have gotten up. My class was to have been taught. It's a little dizzying, too, isn't it. The sun was to have arisen... And refreshing -- the polar bears were to become extinct... It lends the option of reading in the present tense what didn't happen... also the reality that whatever we think could be wrong.

Anyway --

The oil companies are being called in to defend their government subsidies.

"The lawmakers were scheduled to hear from top executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., BP America Inc., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, which together earned about $123 billion last year because of soaring oil and gasoline prices.

Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said he wants to know why, with such profits, the oil industry is steadfastly fighting to keep $18 billion in tax breaks, stretched over 10 years."

Industry leaders say the tax breaks are needed to continue exploration and development. Also, of course, it is said implied that the price of gas will skyrocket if the breaks are lifted...

I always believed that -- that gas prices stayed low because of subsidies. But what if that's not true -- what if gas prices in this country are low because that's the nature of supply and demand -- we have a really big country, and people have to cover a lot of distances -- if the price of gas were a lot higher maybe there would have been a push for public transportation years ago. Just as the technology for the 100 mpg car exists -- and the electric car...

Maybe it's not the pocket change billions the oil companies are fighting for, but keeping the money out of the research of alternative fuels...

It's all speculation. I'm feeling speculative today.

In the article, Bush says that oil companies shouldn't be singled out.
Bush says he'll veto the bill whatever the outcome.

A Vast Spiderweb of Pipelines

Having tired a bit of the news lately, I've been looking at more industry sites. My newest find is OilOnline. "Your on-line source for the oil industry."

I don't know -- I guess I'd heard of off shore drilling plenty -- just never really thought about what this would mean.

"Strip away the water and sands from the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf, and you’ll find a vast spider’s web of pipelines – some 28,000 miles of pipe crisscrossing the Gulf from Texas to Alabama. Although deepwater pipelines currently account for a small fraction of the total, that’s where the industry’s focus has been for the past decade."


Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

In college, two of my best friends and I went camping on Corpus Christi. We camped right on the beach and listened to the waves and the sand. It's one of my favorite places in the world, I think -- though it was a very rough camping night. It was so windy we thought we were going to blow away until someone had he life-saving idea of putting the spare tire from the rental car in the tent. I remember warm Lone Star beer being part of the scenario too... That was 18 years ago, I guess. I went back on my camping trip with my dog a few years later. There was a seafood joint called Snoopy's there. I'm always a sucker for Snoopy. I wonder if it looks different now. If our tent would be sandwiched now between the rattlesnakes and an enormous oil rig.

In 2006 the National Geographic reported on "the successful discovery of oil at a staggering depth beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico."

"The well delves through 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) of seawater and more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) of seafloor to strike oil in the lower tertiary formation—a layer of rock laid down between 65 million and 24 million years ago."

I've been looking for about 20 minutes now and I can't seem to find any reports on the environmental effects of the drilling. The National Geographic doesn't mention it -- and I can't seem to find anyone else mentioning it either. This seems strange to me.

I did find a site called the Gulf Of Mexico Foundation -- that says it's purpose is to promote conservation in the Gulf of Mexico. See now, don't try this at home. It looked like a lovely site from the start -- with pictures of coral and clams and things. But when you look at the partners there are lots of big oil dollars attached -- and while the site reports on problems in the Gulf with fish and coral, it doesn't mention oil at all and offers up many negative stories about drug companies, wind farms, biofuels and why coastal residencies.

The ocean is being mined. I'm remembering again my friend Michael, the oilman and deep sea diver warning that we are killing the oceans. That we could reenter a time when the oceans cannot sustain life at all...

Vast spiderwebs of subterranean pipelines abound.


photo by Richard Ling
link

Percentage of Fault Allocated

I couldn't even look at this at a normal hour today -- I'm at a bit of a loss, feeling like I've stumbled into some sort of gap in the project and also my own history that I'm not sure how to handle...

Anyway, I started looking through the NY Times cross referencing Brooklyn and lung disease. The thing is, I'm not really versed in computer assisted reporting, and the kind of project about Brooklyn I'm contemplating... well... I'm not sure I'm up for it.

February 26, 2007 The violinist and composer Leroy Jenkins, one of the pre-eminent musicians of 1970s free jazz, who worked on and around the lines between jazz and classical music, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 74 and lived in Brooklyn.

Larry Fink, 2005

Leroy Jenkins playing with the reunited Revolutionary Ensemble.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said his wife, Linda Harris.

link

*

Donald M. Halperin, a former New York state senator who represented shorefront neighborhoods of Brooklyn for 23 years and then served briefly as Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's housing commissioner, died on Monday in Brooklyn. He was 60.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Brenda Halperin.
link

*

COMPANY NEWS; CIGARETTE MAKER FOUND PARTLY RESPONSIBLE IN MAN'S DEATH
Published: December 19, 2003
link
A New York jury said yesterday that Brown & Williamson, the maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes, was partly responsible for a Brooklyn man's death from lung cancer. A six-person jury at New York Supreme Court in Brooklyn said the man, Harry Frankson, who smoked cigarettes for more than 40 years, was 50 percent at fault for his illness, while British American Tobacco, which has operated in the United States as Brown & Williamson, and other defendants held the rest of the blame. The case was brought by Gladys Frankson, Mr. Frankson's widow. The jury will reconvene on Jan. 7 to determine punitive damages. It awarded the plaintiff $350,000 in damages, which will be reduced by half because of the percentage of fault allocated to the plaintiff. The company said it expected the case to be reversed eventually.

I've talked a lot over these last few months about responsibility --
I think that cigarette companies do have a responsibility for selling -- making money on -- administering toxins. Tobacco is one of the only ingestible carcinogens still for sale in this country --
People also have a responsibility - that of choice and free will...

The Brooklyn spill happened, was not cleaned up and was not revealed. If the worse case scenario were true in, and lung disease skyrocketed in Green Point -- is still skyrocketing -- what does that mean? And to smokers? Would the oil companies then owe a percentage of the fault of death? Would cigarette companies be off the hook?

I still just can't quite get my mind around it --
the biggest oil spill in the country --
unnoticed
unattended to...
Could you examine the birds of Brooklyn? Are there any birds left in Brooklyn?

Out the kitchen window in the apartment where my father grew up you could see the tomato plants in the back few feet of yard...
food grown of toxic soil...
permeated
ingested.

My Grandparents Lungs

some things just take a long time to recover from -- and some things are not cleaned up after well...

I myself am slow to get over things... I've been home for two days now and I'm still so tired I can barely see straight --
furthermore I'm still thinking about Brooklyn.

Here's the thing:
Both of my grandparents died of lung disease.

They were smokers -- so this was a surprise to no one. In his Green Point dining room turned clinic, with oozing bandages and an IV drip, my grandfather asked me if I smoked. I lied and said no -- I was 14 at the time -- he knew, I'm sure. He told me to never start. That is a conversation I have remembered with shame my whole life.

This changes none of that -- But still,
what if it wasn't just the smoke...

I thought I should fish around and look for fume inhalation and its relationship to lung disease... I found so much information I'm going to have to spend the next few days (or months) sifting through it.

Unfortunately, most of what I found was in PDF format... as I said, I can barely see straight, but here is one quote from The Material Safety Data Sheet from Granite Construction Incorporated:

"Inhalation: Petroleum asphalt emissions (fumes and vapors) may have an unpleasant odor, and my produce nausea and irritation of the upper respiratory tract. Elevated concentration of thermal decomposition (hydrocarbons) and chemical asphyxiation (carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide). Systematic effects associated with trace components (less than one percent) are not anticipated during normal use. Chronic exposure to elevated levels of asphalt emissions may result in chronic respiratory irritation and/or other lung disease."

Of course there is no article that I can find that says, "prolonged exposure from a 60 year old unattended oil spill in the earth surrounding ones bedroom results in lung disease."

Of course, I'm seriously contemplating an investigative reporting project. Ugh.

And I'm still thinking about yesterday's carpet cleaner -- satisfied that Exxon bought him a fan -- and saying that when he couldn't smell the fumes because of the fans they must be staying underground...

This was not what I expected to learn about oil.
Sometimes a thing becomes more personal than you could ever imagine.

Some people never talk about anything -- maybe talking is too intimate -- too immediate -- maybe it allows for realities one simply doesn't want to exist...

The thing is, what we don't talk about can kill us.
Things don't go away just because we manage to push them out of our senses.

We don't feel them, maybe -- but they live inside our lungs -- eating away at us.
Maybe they killed our ancestors.
Maybe they will kill our children, too...

I thought I would see what would happen if I learned one thing about oil everyday for a year...

It's Stunning

So...
over nearly a century, an estimated 20-30 million gallons of oil has leaked into the water and soil of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, NY. The story got some mounting attention in 2007, as lawsuits are prepared to combat inaction on the part of Exxon and five other companies involved in an enormous toxic waste situation. Read here here here and hear here.

A report this month from the Environmental Protection Agency suggested that the Newtown spill may be twice as large as first believed — some 30 million gallons, nearly three times the size of the Alaska spill. It has polluted the 4-mile strip of waterway and some 55 residential and commercial acres around it, gathering in subsurface reservoirs, mixing with groundwater, creating toxic vapors and and seeping, slowly but inexorably, into the creek. One major concern is the reported leakage of chemical vapor into homes.

Vapors into the homes... arsenic - lead... we have no idea what this means -- has meant to families to children over the years. What effect on families - family histories... could toxic fumes cause toxic behavior? Physical illness? Mental illness...

I've just returned home from a week in Brooklyn, and somehow it seems even closer -- Greenpoint, according to NPR is still home to Polish immigrants -- which is what it was 60 years ago, when the bulk of the spill occurred; which is what it was 60 years ago when my father and his brother Al were playing bloody knuckles and my grandmother and Ellie were standing on the stoop gossiping while the fresh kilbasi boiled inside... when we drank the water...

The spill, originally several times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil leak, resulted from an accident in the 1950s and lay undiscovered until 1978. In notices of intent to sue that were sent to the five companies, Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general, said that so much oil had leaked into the creek that some samples of its sediment, when dried and weighed, were nearly one-tenth oil.

The notices also disclosed that an internal study by one of the companies found nearly 100 different pollutants in the creek water or sediment, including benzene, arsenic and lead.

Of course, the timing is... not for the Polish immigrants. Brooklyn is gentrifying. Already the brick row house my family sold a few decades ago for about $60,000 would be worth probably ten time that; imagine if it wasn't nestled in toxic waste...

“The Brooklyn-Queens waterfront has the potential to be New York’s Gold Coast, with sparkling towers, schools, parks and libraries,” said Eric Gioia, a City Council member whose Queens district abuts the creek. “Cleaning Newtown Creek is critical to that vision.”

Still the ability to ignore is amazing. On the NPR story, a carpet cleaner got Exxon to pay for a fan to ventilate his work area because the smell of oil was so strong.

"with the fans running we don't smell them [the fumes] -- with the fans running, I think they stay underground."

I love the language of that. With the fans running the fumes stay underground.

Brooklyn is home to the biggest oil disaster in this country. I read about this in October, and I've been trying to figure out how to make sense of it since then -- to put into some sort of context...

maybe there simply is none.

When I was about 12 the house across the street from my grandmother's burned to the ground. I wasn't allowed out on the stoop, but I stood at the window and watched it go up -- later I took a picture which is still hanging on my wall --

and the flames swallowed up what had been. And there were rumors of intent -- murmors of intent and neglect and what a pity

and we all stood and watched -- and the fire trucks came late -- and everything was destroyed.

Found Oil

Yesterday it was announced that a massive crude oil deposit was discovered in Argentina.

The article in the Times reported:

"By 2007, all the companies produced 60 million barrels, and this reserve ... represents almost double what they produce," said Chubut Gov. Mario Das Neves in a statement posted on the provincial government Web site.

Buenos Aires-based Pan American reportedly spent $700 million in exploration investments last year. That company is controlled by BP -- the same company that owns the well in Alaska -- I think it's probably time to take a look at the major oil companies. There's a lot of talk about government ownership and stake in oil rights, but I wonder if there aren't a small handful of companies that are simply humoring governments...

What kinds of returns do you expect on a $700 million investment? How small does that make appear the price of an entire election. It makes me feel a little better about my current investment in poetry. Perspective.

Another kicker, according to ABC news, US oil giant AMCO explored the same place to no avail... I'd love to hear the conversations there this morning! Does someone get to say I Told You So? Does someone get fired?

The oil is a relief in Argentina, where growth abounds and energy has been lagging.

I'm picturing a cartoon (I do that sometimes...) -- a cartoon where the world, down on his luck, finds ten bucks in his back pocket. In the next frame he spends it on cigarettes.

Spicy Tuna

Yesterday, a headline in the Times read, "Warnings Don't Deter Lovers Of Sushi."

For me, the only deterrent that ever veers me away from eating raw tuna is price and the fact that my kids don't like it -- occasionally cold, but that's never much a little warm Saki won't fix... I hadn't read the "warning" article from Wednesday, but felt alarmed enough to do so. It was reported in the food and wine section of the paper -- those sections are funny -- sometimes I wonder if they are trying to lure or bury with the placement of some stories...

"High Mercury Levels Found In Tuna Sushi." Apparently, reporters from the Times went all over Manhattan buying tuna sushi and testing it for mercury. Mercury is not regularly tested for by any government department.

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.

I've written about this before, but sometimes a topic warrants coming back to. It was the undeterred that intrigued me today...

Coal mining, coal burning, oil refining and oil pollution are all main causes of mercury poison. Last month an article from the Chicago Tribune looked at one plant's excretions into Lake Michigan.

The U.S. Steel mill in Gary and the BP refinery in nearby Whiting rank among the nation's worst factories on health threats to neighbors from water pollution, according to a Tribune analysis of new federal research.

Mercury, lead and other pollutants poured into the Lake Michigan basin by the two industrial giants account for the high health-risk scores tabulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The findings are based on the amount of pollution released by each facility, the toxicity of each chemical released and estimates of the number of people who eat fish caught in nearby waters.

Here's a funny fact I found -- the mercury that spills out of your old thermometer -- you can swallow it and it won't hurt you (if you are in good health to begin with). That form and amount of the metal is hard to absorb, and easy to get rid of. But fish eat fish after fish after fish, and the levels of mercury become concentrated inside of them, permeating their flesh.

People are exposed to methylmercury almost entirely by eating contaminated fish and wildlife that are at the top of aquatic foodchains. The National Research Council, in its 2000 report on the toxicological effects of methylmercury, pointed out that the population at highest risk is the offspring of women who consume large amounts of fish and seafood. The report went on to estimate that more than 60,000 children are born each year at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental effects due to in utero exposure to methylmercury. In its 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that mercury also may pose a risk to some adults and wildlife populations that consume large amounts of fish that is contaminated by mercury.

That's from the US Geological website. This from an article in Discover Magazine:

Infants born to mothers contaminated by mercury in Japan’s Minamata Bay in 1956 had profound neurological disabilities including deafness, blindness, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. In adults, mercury poisoning can cause numbness, stumbling, dementia, and death. “It’s no secret that mercury exposure is highly toxic,” says toxicologist Alan Stern, a contributor to a 2000 National Research Council report on mercury toxicity. But high-level exposures like those at Minamata cannot help scientists determine whether six silver fillings and a weekly tuna-salad sandwich will poison you or an unborn child. “The question is, what are the effects at low levels of exposure?” he says.

Data now suggest effects might occur at levels lower than anyone suspected. Some studies show that children who were exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. In adults, recent studies show a possible link between heart disease and mercury ingested from eating fish. Other groups claim mercury exposure is responsible for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and the escalating rate of autism.

Fillings??!! Really, it seems like a bunch of the disconnect stems from the fact that we don't really know yet what the effects are. But isn't it one of those things you look around and think -- autism, attention span, cancer, Alzheimer's -- we know these to be growing exponentially...

Why do we do things that are so clearly bad for us? What exactly do we need proved?

But also, where do we go -- what do we eat...

Who what where when why
do we spend our time and is safety really what we are looking for?

Boundaries

This year, a decision will be handed down in a case: "New Jersey V. Delaware."

New Jersey is supporting oil-giant BPs building of a natural gas facility edging into Delaware's land. I found this article on what might be my new favorite website, Energy Law 360.

“The intense opposition to LNG comes from the theory, quite mistaken, that LNG tankers are large bombs susceptible to blowing up and taking out major East Coast cities,” [said Stephen L. Teichler, an energy partner at Duane Morris LLP's Washington, D.C. office.].

And get this!

“Delaware considered legislation authorizing the National Guard to step in to protect Delaware’s borders from encroachment. And one New Jersey legislator even explored the seaworthiness of the decommissioned battleship New Jersey, currently docked as a museum on the Camden waterfront, in the event the state was forced to repel an armed invasion by Delaware."

Very strange thought. While state autonomy often seems to surface in regards to laws, the idea of one state taking up arms against another -- and using national resources to do it -- seems extremely unsettling this New Year's morn...

This story reminded me of another one I noticed during my brief oil spill Hiatus --

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

OIL SPILL SETS OFF BORDER DISPUTE: The environmental disaster wrought by last week's oil spill in the Kerch Strait off southern Russia, as reignited a border dispute between Ukraine and Russia in the region. Ukraine's foreign minister has blamed the tragedy, in which several sailors and thousands of birds and other wildlife perished, on the two country's failure to reach an agreement on navigation and the delimitation of borders in the strait and the Sea of Azov. Moscow has said that giving Ukraine control over the Kerch Strait, which Ukraine claims falls within its borders, would harm Russian security and economic interests.

This was a very small story in the midst of a roundup of top Russian news stories -- when I went to read the article it was, understandably, in Russian. But the issue is clear -- disaster sets in when people try to make boundaries in lieu of common sense.

I don't know -- boundaries is such a hot button word in pop-psychology -- maybe that's what I'm intrigued by. Over dinner the other night I was discussing Zionism with a man (the same man working to save Sanskrit) who thought Israel should just kick all the Palestinians out tomorrow. I'm a Zionist -- in practice, but not in theory.

That distinction has so much to do with the world. There are so many decisions that make sense in the moment, that make no sense with any sort of larger look at the world. What is at stake, what is forfeited through the requirement of autonomy, is just too big.

While I completely understand the need for self-protection, I also really think that no solutions can come maintaining an "us and them" mentality -- anywhere. There is no ownership, there is no time line. There is an I and a larger. Like the conversation about Americans and American poetics again -- where does the I fit in so that one (a person, a state, a country, an issue, a people, a world, a lover) is neither inflated nor diminished -- connected through communication; not alienated inside of it.

We are people -- who benefit from wealths and suffer from consequences -- living on this earth, in these homes, bodies and lungs. Better together.