In Protest

I'm thinking about two stories today.
The first is from the BBC, with the headline:

Strike to Close Oil Pipeline.

The second from Forbes:

Nigerian Militants Report Another Pipeline Bombing.

They are both pretty straight forward stories. The strike in Scotland could cost BP and estimated 50M pounds a day. Because of the attacks in Nigeria Shell says they may not be able to fill some of their orders.

I guess I'm thinking about different parts of the world. Who has power and who becomes desperate. Employment. Exploitation.

Scotland:
"A Unite spokeswoman said: "Unite believes that it is legitimate to comment that Ineos are responsible for the current pension plan being valued about £40m below what the value would have been had the full value of the fund been transferred in 2005.""

Nigeria:
"The group says it is fighting to force the federal government to direct more oil industry revenues to the region, which remains deeply poor despite four decades of oil production in the area."

There's something in the juxtaposition of plight --
like language, protest can teach us about climate -- about circumstances and lives.

I'm thinking that it must be so desperate in Nigeria -- that people attack and pollute and destroy their own land and bodies in order to try to enact change. One of the things that they are fighting for is to be employed -- of course, once one is employed they can strike...
I'm thinking about the colors of the protesters, and access to power.

Miles and Miles and MIles

When you go to the library of the Central Intelligence Agency on-line a cursor writes the title across the top of the page and makes a noise that sounds and blinks like a very old computer.

The alphabetical list of world pipelines by country is listed in kilograms.
First I am annoyed because last I checked, saved that week in second grade, we as a country aren't metric.
Next I'm relieved to imagine that our government is also concerned with the rest of the world.
Next I wonder if the whole list is set up to be unreadable. There are different categories of pipelines which seem to change from country to country and don't seem to be constructed in any sort of a parallel list. Reporting years vary. I also wonder if I have just set up some red flag for myself simply by looking for oil stats on the CIA website. When I was little I wanted to be a spy.

The United Arab Emerates list is: condensate 520 km; gas 2,908 km; liquid petroleum gas 300 km; oil 2,950 km; oil/gas/water 5 km; refined products 156 km (2007)

In 2006, the US had 244,620 km of pipelines for petroleum products and 548,665 km of natural gas ones.

Thanks to a handy little on-line calculator metric conversions are easy:
The US has 152,001 miles of pipelines for petroleum products.

The entire country is only 3.7 million miles square. I wonder how this can be right or if I have simply read the whole site wrong.


www.landholt.com


mynetbiz-online.com

I'm thinking again about the conference where cardio-vascular surgeons and oil refiners got together to brain storm.

I don't want these pipelines to be our veins.
I don't want oil to be our blood.

I am thinking that the ruins of of ancient Greece are quite beautiful. ((I saw an opera set outside as in the ruins many years ago -- the sun went down as live horses were marched across the stones.))
I am thinking that the ruins of now will not be.

I am thinking that I will be glad when this year is done.