The Refinery

I knew when I started this project -- some days, some weeks would be like this... every day for a year... days I don't want the news -- when all I want is poetry, as this, it seems to me, is one of the ancient forms of salvation before us. In China, the Monks are caring for the people -- the victims of the storm... the people who have lost everything are swimming to find the Monks... if the news is our connection to the passing of events and of our lives, there must still be more ancient forms of communication and refining that tell a deeper truth... The Refinery
by Robert Pinsky
". . . our language, forged in the dark by centuries of violent pressure, underground, out of the stuff of dead life." Thirsty and languorous after their long black sleep The old gods crooned and shuffled and shook their heads. Dry, dry. By railroad they set out Across the desert of stars to drink the world Our mouths had soaked In the strange sentences we made While they were asleep: a pollen-tinted Slurry of passion and lapsed Intention, whose imagined Taste made the savage deities hiss and snort. In the lightless carriages, a smell of snake And coarse fur, glands of lymphless breath And ichor, the avid stenches of Immortal bodies. Their long train clicked and sighed Through the gulfs of night between the planets And came down through the evening fog Of redwood canyons. From the train At sunset, fiery warehouse windows Along a wharf. Then dusk, a gash of neon: Bar. Black pinewoods, a junction crossing, glimpses Of sluggish surf among the rocks, a moan Of dreamy forgotten divinity calling and fading Against the windows of a town. Inside The train, a flash Of dragonfly wings, an antlered brow. Black night again, and then After the bridge, a palace on the water: The great Refinery--impossible city of lights, A million bulbs tracing its turreted Boulevards and mazes. The castle of a person Pronounced alive, the Corporation: a fictional Lord real in law. Barbicans and torches Along the siding where the engine slows At the central tanks, a ward Of steel palisades, valved and chandeliered. The muttering gods Greedily penetrate those bright pavilions-- Libation of Benzene, Naphthalene, Asphalt, Gasoline, Tar: syllables Fractioned and cracked from unarticulated Crude, the smeared keep of life that fed On itself in pitchy darkness when the gods Were new--inedible, volatile And sublimated afresh to sting Our tongues who use it, refined from oil of stone. The gods batten on the vats, and drink up Lovecries and memorized Chaucer, lines from movies And songs hoarded in mortmain: exiles' charms, The basal or desperate distillates of breath Steeped, brewed and spent As though we were their aphids, or their bees, That monstered up sweetness for them while they dozed.
From The Want Bone, published by The Ecco Press. Copyright © 1990 by Robert Pinsky. And the Poets.org

One Thing

Some 60% of all federal land as well as most of the East and West coasts are currently subject to drilling bans - many were put in place after a big oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969.

I did not know that.

CNNMoney.com

Indonesia Leaves OPEC

Indonesia left OPEC today.

"Actually there is also one rationale -- that we are not happy with the high oil prices. Because we are an oil producer and we are an oil consumer," energy minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said.

Output is down, membership dues are up, and the country buys more oil than it sells, according to the Reuters article in the NY Times yesterday.

"Indonesia raised fuel prices by an average of just under 30 percent on Saturday, as it struggles to plug the fiscal hole left by soaring crude oil prices."

Indonesia has an output of 927,000 per day. They were used to exporting a lot of oil -- their output is on the wane now -- and they can't afford to buy oil at the prices they are forced to sell them at.

"Fuel is still subsidized in the country where millions of people live on less than two dollars a day, with the government expected to spend billions of dollars keeping fuel costs among the lowest in Asia."

Two dollars a day. How does the oil system work there? What do they use oil for? Heat? Cooking?

This from The Energy Wire early this month at The Washington Post on-line:

"Many countries - especially in the developing world -- are actually directly subsidizing fuel prices. In the name of helping their citizens cope, they are subsidizing energy waste, subsidizing an addiction to imports, and subsidizing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, as oil prices rise, so do the costs of these fuel subsidies. Many of these countries are also trying to hold food prices steady as the prices of global food commodities soar."

I imagine our numbers could look a little like that to parts of Europe as the dollar falls and we discuss a gas tax holiday... fuel is still subsidized in the country where millions of Americans can't afford to keep their heat on in the winter.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the median full-time working man in this country made about $100 per day last year.

Global Shock

The Environment Ministers meeting of the G8 summit met over the weekend. To quote from their "Chair Summery:"

* Developed countries should take the lead in achieving a significant reduction.
* It is necessary to change the current socio-economic structures and transition toward low-carbon societies.
* To achieve low-carbon societies all countries need innovations in their lifestyle, production and consumption patterns, and social infrastructure in addition to technological innovations.


There was a second article (or set of stories) yesterday about the Rockefeller's attempt to convince Exxon to change their ways. The times article was interesting in its opening and closing --

First Paragraph:
HOUSTON — The Rockefeller family built one of the great American fortunes by supplying the nation with oil. Now history has come full circle: some family members say it is time to start moving beyond the oil age.
Final two Paragraphs:

The Fraternal Order of Police, which represents public safety officers, whose pensions are invested in Exxon, has publicly opposed the shareholder effort to change company policy.

“The Rockefeller resolution threatens to degrade the value of Exxon Mobil,” the organization wrote in a letter to Mr. Tillerson that criticized the splitting of the top executive jobs.

I think it's a really interesting set of bookmarks -- the Rockefellers and the Police Pension fund. What if the Rockefellers decided to fund every police pension fund in the country -- would that help? I would imagine they could do it -- would that lighten some pressure on Exxon? Of course there are plenty of other Rockefelleresque characters who are not striving for change...

Developed countries should take the lead... What constitutes developed? Iceland seems developed to me... I would imagine it's easier on an island...


Truckers are striking in England and Wales.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned on Wednesday that the world was facing an oil "shock" and would find there was no easy answer to price rises without coordinated global action.

Brown, who saw hundreds of protesting British truck drivers cause road chaos in London on Tuesday, said he understood the impact on families across the country, but only an international strategy would work in bringing oil prices down.

A wave of fuel protests, echoing similar demonstrations in 2000, began in France with fishermen blockading ports to demand cheaper fuel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on Tuesday for an EU cap on fuel sales tax.

Senior British ministers offered gentle hints on Tuesday that the government may be preparing to back down on plans to increase road tax on higher-polluting cars. There was also speculation Brown might delay planned fuel tax rises.

"A global shock on this scale requires global solutions," Brown wrote in the Guardian newspaper.

Global shock.

Truckers are having a really hard time here in the States, too -- despite the fact that diesel is nearly half what it is in England. The NY Times reported yesterday:

“Most truckers are one major breakdown — a broken axle or a damaged engine — away from bankruptcy,” said Mr. Hendley, who laid off his last driver this month and turned to independent operators to ship his logs.

The squeeze on truckers’ profits from rising fuel costs is compounded by the slowing economy, which is reducing freight traffic. Truckers say they find it hard to impose fuel surcharges, in part because their industry has suffered for years from over-capacity as deregulation drew thousands of small operators into trucking.

That article goes on to say that truckers are selling their trucks and getting out of the business all together - so much so, in fact, that the used truck market is flooded -- and used trucks are being sold abroad -- "particularly to Russia."

If we can't afford gas and we sell our trucks to countries with lots of oil, is that taking the lead? Should the government have a buy back program and melt down all the trucks along with the gun in some big furnace in DC?

I'm all over this morning, but one other thing comes to mind. I'm a photographer -- I used to photograph weddings. Five year later all of my equipment is obsolete because of digital -- which, at the time, seemed like no big deal. My state of the art cameras which are still pretty amazing are worth a tenth of what they were then -- the guy at the camera store said I might be able to sell them to an art student...

Things do change -- drastically and quickly. It' expensive and uncomfortable -- but it happens and we move on.

I think there is an interesting paradox to the idea that fuel and travel hang in the balance while digitally we can go to the G8 summit and back on a Wednesday morning.

Things Will Be Different

It's funny -- when we usually think of the phrase "when I was a kid" it is followed by some account of trials and tribulations since overcome by the modern world. I had to walk five miles up hill in the winter...

When I was a kid I used to fly all the time. To Florida, to Europe, to the Virgin Islands... It was fun to be an unaccompanied minor -- with the wing pin and the playing cards. I used to collect airports. Top of my list, Milwaukee -- they have a great used bookstore and a museum store. Also London, where you can buy a Liberty's of London tie on your way home. Bottom, O'Hare -- with Miami right up there too -- both for the fact that you should not have to take a train between connecting flights.

There is growing speculation that airline travel will soon become a luxury reserved only for the very rich. An industry analyst said on NPR this weekend that airlines were never posed to make money with gas anywhere near it's current rates -- which still seem well below target.

Last week, American Airlines announced significant cuts in service -- including grounding almost 10 percent of it's fleet:

"FORT WORTH , Texas – AMR Corporation, the parent company of American Airlines, Inc., today announced significant reductions to its 2008 domestic flight schedule, including a fourth quarter mainline domestic capacity reduction of 11 percent to 12 percent from the previous year. It also outlined plans to retire at least 75 mainline and regional aircraft and unveiled several revenue growth initiatives, as the company responds to record fuel prices, growing concerns about the economy and a difficult competitive environment." Company Press Release.

Airline Business Magazine said in an article two days later:

"On announcing these survival tactics, American chief executive Gerard Arpey neatly summed up the seriousness of the situation in which the industry finds itself: "The airline industry as it is constituted today was not built to withstand oil prices at $125 a barrel, and certainly not when record fuel expenses are coupled with a weak US economy." American's first-quarter fuel bill rose by 45%, with the carrier forking out $665 million more for fuel than it would have done had the price of oil remained the same as it was in the same quarter last year."

I lost the array of sands I used to collect -- Israel, Tortola, PEI, Italy. I've been to some amazing places... You never think you won't go back.


Tortola -- Cane Garden Bay
By Phillip


Capri
James Denyer


Maui
unattributed

It's funny -- all the photos I took on all those trips are shoved away sloppily in boxes. I guess it's time to pull them out and make sure they survive... if it's not too late.
It's human nature to be wasteful in times of plenty...
You never think things will be different.

Rememberance

The Department of Defense has identified 4,073 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. NY Times -- from Names of the Dead.

From Last month

"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said.

From the archives -- August 2, 2000

Keynote speeches are usually aimed at firing up the crowd. Mr. McCain's passive approach flattened the already placid mood of the convention. Few delegates were likely to be convinced by his praise of the prospective nominee as ''my friend.'' Moreover, Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, described a convoluted generational and military link to the Texas governor by asserting that his grandfather had been former President George Bush's commander in World War II. Then he conceded that ''it is my turn to serve under the son of my grandfather's brave subordinate.''

I have just spent over 90 minutes sifting through old articles, quotes, speeches and whatnot.

May the soldiers be safe
May the soldiers be happy
May the soldiers be healthy
May the soldiers live in ease...

"No One Cares About The People... Just The Oil."

Yesterday I was intrigued by the way that we talk about the other and lose track of ourselves. We can talk about the Middle East -- the disconnect between the wealthy and the poor -- about money and corruption as if it had no bearing here...

I was looking for something small this morning, actually -- I was hoping to find one tiny thing that Native Americans used to do with oil that I didn't know about -- that's not what happened, though.

The Navajo and Hopi reservations in Utah and Arizona provide two examples. When Congress enlarged the Navajo Reservation with the Aneth extension in southeast Utah in 1933, it reserved 37.5 percent of any future oil or gas royalties for Utah Navajos, to be administered in trust by the state. The remaining 62.5 percent went to the Navajo Nation. Since the 1956 discovery of oil at Aneth and Montezuma Creek, Utah, oil companies have drilled 577 wells and pumped an estimated 370.7 million barrels of oil and another 339,100 cubic feet of natural gas from the area. In the process they contaminated ground water and area springs by injecting carbon dioxide and saltwater into wells to increase production. In 1990, there were ninety-nine spills of oil, saltwater, and chemicals in the Aneth fields, damaging 36,622 acres. Oil companies have been lax in cleaning up their sites or compensating Navajos. "There are no environmental rules or regulations here," complained Navajo councilman Andrew Tso. "No one cares about the people who live here, just the oil."

On the other hand, oil companies have paid at least $180 million in royalties, including $60 million to the Utah Navajo Trust Fund. But little has trickled down to Aneth residents. Seventy-five percent of the 6,500 Utah Navajos in the region have no electricity or running water. Most make a hundred-mile round trip each week to haul in water. Recent audits disclosed that state and tribal mismanagement, poor business decisions, fraud, and bribes have bankrupted the Utah Navajo Trust Fund. In addition, the Navajo Nation has not returned to its Utah chapter houses a fraction of the oil revenues it collects. And now oil production in Aneth is steadily falling. In 1994, the Navajo Nation Council created its own Navajo Oil and Gas Company and imposed a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in Aneth, calling for the enforcement of federal environmental protection laws. The drilling continues.

Author: David Rich Lewis. Adapted from: Lewis, David R. 1995. "Native Americans and the Environment: A survey of twentieth century issues." American Indian Quarterly, 19: 423-450, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.