Revengeful Producers

I'm still totally fascinated by The History of Standard Oil written in 1904. I think I'll probably be reading this for a good week at least -- Get this:

At one mass-meeting the following resolution was actually passed by a body of revengeful producers:

Resolved, that to give a wider market throughout the world to petroleum, to enhance its price and to protect producers from unjust combinations of home refiners, a committee be appointed to ask the representatives of foreign governments at Washington to request their respective governments to put a proper tariff on refined oil and to admit crude oil free into the ports of their respective governments.

Toward the end of October Captain Hasson presented the scheme which he and the committee had prepared. It proposed that there should be established what was called a Petroleum Producers' Agency.* This agency was really an incorporated company with a capital of one million dollars, the stock of which was to be subscribed to only by the producers or their friends. This agency was to purchase all the oil of the members of the association at at least five dollars a barrel. If stocks could be kept down so that the market took all of the oil at once, the full price was to be paid at once in cash; if not, the agency was to store the oil in tanks it was to build, and a portion of the price was to be paid in tank certificates. By thus controlling all the oil, the agency expected to protect the weakest as well as the strongest producer, to equalise the interest of different localities, to prevent refiners and exporters from accumulating stocks, and to prevent gambling in oil.


I even love the way some of the spelling is different... so long ago. Not the politics! Not the path.

Here it is, the opening of the borders and the beginning of the global market.

Just last week, the US stopped their policy of purchasing oil reserves in order to allow for more oil on the general market -- also Saudi Arabia agreed to boost production.

The difference now is that -- well, we are not in the same time at all -- if we ever needed an illustration of peak oil, it's just looking at the past and the way we used to think about it all.

Despite all of Bush's efforts oil prices continue to rise this week...

The Trust

The following is the preface of a book published in 1904.
The History of the Standard Oil Company

By a woman journalist, I would like to add --
by Ida M. Tarbell

A stamp just came out commemorating her.
(I didn't know, by the way, that The Atlantic was 120 years old! This was published in it's early rival McClure's).



I am going to work on reading different parts of it this week and excerpt, I think. I'm fascinated -- by the history, by the writing by the glimpse into current thought in 1904... and today.


This work is the outgrowth of an effort on the part of the editors of McClure's Magazine to deal concretely in their pages with the trust question. In order that their readers might have a clear and succinct notion of the processes by which a particular industry passes from the control of the many to that of the few, they decided a few years ago to publish a detailed narrative of the history of the growth of a particular trust. The Standard Oil Trust was chosen for obvious reasons. It was the first in the field, and it has furnished the methods, the charter, and the traditions for its followers. It is the most perfectly developed trust in existence; that is, it satisfies most nearly the trust ideal of entire control of the commodity in which it deals. Its vast profits have led its officers into various allied interests, such as railroads, shipping, gas, copper, iron, steel, as well as into banks and trust companies, and to the acquiring and solidifying of these interests it has applied the methods used in building up the Oil Trust. It has led in the struggle against legislation directed against combinations. Its power in state and Federal government, in the press, in the college, in the pulpit, is generally recognised. The perfection of the organisation of the Standard, the ability and daring with which it has carried out its projects, make it the pre-eminent trust of the world-the one whose story is best fitted to illuminate the subject of combinations of capital.


Let's remember, now, Standard Oil later became Exxon-Mobil. Read it again:

Exxon-Mobil was chosen for obvious reasons. It was the first in the field, and it has furnished the methods, the charter, and the traditions for its followers. It is the most perfectly developed trust in existence; that is, it satisfies most nearly the trust ideal of entire control of the commodity in which it deals. Its vast profits have led its officers into various allied interests, such as railroads, shipping, gas, copper, iron, steel, as well as into banks and trust companies, and to the acquiring and solidifying of these interests it has applied the methods used in building up the Oil Trust. It has led in the struggle against legislation directed against combinations. Its power in state and Federal government, in the press, in the college, in the pulpit, is generally recognised. The perfection of the organisation of Exxon, the ability and daring with which it has carried out its projects, make it the pre-eminent trust of the world-the one whose story is best fitted to illuminate the subject of combinations of capital.

We Understand

A few months ago in Nova Scotia a small community center was robbed.

It was robbed for its heating oil. The theft caused an oil spill. Somehow a flash crosses my mind -- a new mad max style world...

The community rallied -- as communities can -- came up with almost all of the $5000 clean up price tag -- the center will have to raise the rest. The problem would have been a lot worse if the oil had reached the nearby water well. Phew.

There was a clause in community center's insurance policy that exempted the company from responsibility for oil spills! I wonder if I have one of those. I don't understand insurance companies.

The Community Center bought a new indoor oil tank to replace the old out door one.

"More people may feel like they need to steal oil," Ms. Pittman said. "With the price of oil going up and up, and so many people on fixed income, where are they going to get the money?"

"The cost doesn’t justify the theft," Ms. Beck said. "But we understand why people are doing it."

The Nova Scotia Chronicle.

One Thing

Windfall profits are unexpected earnings on oil sold for more than the price fixed in a company's contract.

Something Different

Sometimes, lately, I miss really big news -- which is pretty strange, since I look at the Times and other papers for nearly 2 hours most mornings. I'm so focused on the project, though, that I barely skim the front page.

So this morning, when I read the headline that the death toll Myanmar had climbed to 78,000 -- I figured I should put the project down and find out what on earth is going on in the world. To be honest, I didn't even know Burma changed its name.


uncredited photo -- probably AP

Many of these huge natural disasters are being linked to global warming. I didn't read anything about that in this article, but I imagine it will be said later. In the meantime, everything is compounded by multiples because the government there won't let in any foreign aid. They are turning away huge ships of food and medical supplies -- "a junta that human rights advocates say is putting its own survival before that of a storm-ravaged population."

I thought I was reading aside. What scares me now, though, is how often oil is linked in to almost anything you look into. That's why I picked this project, of course -- it was no accident, I may have said before. I wrote my undergraduate thesis 16 years ago on the first gulf war -- went on to write about the second gulf war -- a friend said yesterday that gifts of circumstance come by accident. I disagree. We are always preparing to be in the right place at the right time -- with discipline and patience and practice.

Here's the 18th paragraph of the NY Time article today about the disaster:

There has been some discussion, a second senior administration official said, of whether the United States and France should take measures against Chevron and the French oil and gas company Total for their work on a natural gas pipeline in southern Myanmar, from which the military junta derives much of its wealth. American sanctions against Myanmar ban most companies from working there, but Chevron owns a 28 percent stake in the pipeline, which is operated by Total.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that so far, talk of suspending Chevron’s payments to Myanmar, formerly Burma, had not gone very far.

Repetitive

There was a pipeline explosion in Nigeria today.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine what you are learning new, reading the paper. What I learned today was something about repetition. The following is excerpted/interspersed from two NY Times articles.

May 15, 2008
LAGOS, Nigeria — More than 100 people were feared dead on Thursday after a construction vehicle struck an oil pipeline on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, setting off an oil-fed inferno that spread to surrounding homes and a school.

May 13, 2006
ABUJA, Nigeria, May 12 — As many as 200 people were burned to death and dozens of others injured Friday morning when a gasoline pipeline exploded in a Nigerian seaside village some 30 miles east of the country's commercial capital, Lagos.

2008
“The fire was very high,” said Johnson Fabunmi, a doctor who lives in the area. “Everyone was running for their life.”

2006
Witnesses said the site was strewn with charred bodies and burned cans and buckets that the victims had been using to scoop up the gasoline, according to television reports and local journalists.

2008
At least 45 people were killed in Lagos last December when the fuel they were siphoning from a buried pipeline caught fire. In December 2006, another pipeline ruptured by thieves caught fire, killing about 260. In May of that year, 150 died in pipeline explosion east of Lagos, and another such fire in 1998 killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.

2006
Oil pipeline explosions are not new to Nigeria. At least 1,000 people died in a similar explosion in the town of Jesse in the country's southeast in 1998.

2008
The vast majority of Nigeria’s 130 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Old-fashioned

REARDAN, Wash. - Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can't register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

That's from a Tuesday AP story.

How perfect is that -- we can't imagine where we will go to.
We can't foresee at all the heights to which we will climb...

These guys can't afford the $10,000 for new automated pumps. They can't even fill up SUVs because the pump numbers don't go over $100 for a single sale.

Of course, we don't want to see the future.
Of course, things always keep moving.

In the future, soon, there will be other forms of fuel.
In the future they will laugh at our inability to predict...