The Oil Drum

"To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures." (Flannery O'Connor)

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"The industrialized world's unprecedented economic growth during the last 100 years has been based in large part on increasing availability of cheap petroleum." (Professor Craig Bond Hatfield, 1997. See "Notes" below.)* * *

"Petra: upon thee I will build my church." Saint Matthew, quoting our LORD.

1 Thank you Glorious ELOHIM for Day Three of Creation and the massive carbonate reservoirs charged with light, sweet crude oil that we subject to depletion. (We know Thou takest away as well as givest.)

2 Thanks Merciful JEHOVAH for the Prudhoe Bays and Cantarells defunct; the Thunderhorses and Qatifs of the moment; the Kirkuks, East Baghdads, and Rumalias to come. (Not to mention underground rivers of tar immobilized by Albertan ice.)

3 Praise Be to GOD for 3-D seismic X-ray vision of the greasy flanks of Ghawar the Great, permitting freer access to her hidden resources, thus goosing the world economy;

4 And for horizontal drill bores and accessory attachments with which to better probe her deepest recesses and suction her marrowbones for the jet fuels that carry us to concrete-reinforced native Pacific vacation colonies;

5 And for nitrogen injection and miscible gases and water floods in the mystical shapes of giant spatulas scraping #2 heating oil into the vast furnaces that permit us to consume Mai Tais in shirtsleeves on the Eve's celebration of Your Blessed Son's birthday amongst druidic spray-on-snow-foamed spruce "trees";

6 And for suffocating streams of high-octane gasolines (and for fewer Buddhist monks performing street corner immolations) that we may run guilt-free missions in four-wheel-drive combat vehicles to flush out the fresh tomatoes hiding in the snow-drifted megamarkets of exurbia.

7 And let's not forget those methane fields of Persia! Methane becomes ammonia becomes fertilizer becomes maize kernels becomes high-fructose corn syrup becomes cola six-packs and sacks of flavored popcorn balls becomes a continuous entropic treadmill wind at weight loss clinics from sea to shiny Spandex sea;

8 And methane becomes super-heated steam becomes turbine fodder becomes metered Edison lightning streams becomes blinking digital authentic reggae tunes and frosty A/C piped into the meeting rooms of anti-LNG terminal NIMBY rallies in artichoke-besotted West Coast enclaves;

9 And methane becomes benzene becomes styrene becomes egg trays loaded onto knobby-tired grocery-getters, whose drivers are logged-on to secret chats with lovers back at remote mountain ski camps begging that their incipient feta cheese omelet craving be assuaged after the removal of the synthetic rubber sex toy.

10 GOD grant us ethylene for protuberant belly guts extending from alcoholic West Virginian trailer park burger joint employees, to post-war Rwandan Hutu starvation compound kids envying our bloated appetite for agrochemical solvents, diesel-powered combines, polyethylene-swaddled beef byproducts, and Lo-Cal soda pops spilling entropy into buried septic tanks instead of open-air kerosene-fired shit pits.

11 Thanks for the PVC medical technologies that upgrade our rapidly depleting TV war pundits into nubile neo-con tartlets. See them chatter, un-burkha'd and breast-implanted, whilst indignant circumcised insurgents cast improvised bomb-blessings after our slick ape-blind ego-protective motives.

12 Praise the LORD for bunker fuel mobilizing fleets of concrete aircraft carrier jet decks triggering multiple tsunamis of heat loss whilst assembling near the Strait of Hormuz to spam the farthermost satellite reaches of space with Iranian terrorist-threat accusations.

13 Thank JESUS for stitched & sterilized IED stumps offered up in the service of suburban latch-key teens expending long, empty afternoons gazing at flat-screen, high-definition epidermal cells and hair follicles.

14 Thank CHRIST for Thinsulate pillows with which to muffle our shrieks of ecstasy at the prospect of "incendiary devices" reducing Arab and Persian and Kurdish populations to toast crumbs able to be swept off the grand chessboard with a gold-cuff-linked wrist-flick.

15 CREATOR of light, excreter of Babylonian bitumen pits, hoarder of lignite coal seams, secretor of natural gas liquids blisters, depositor of kerogen-soaked Colorado shales, igniter of zeal for all things hydrocarbon:

16 Thou hast said, "Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith";

17 And we say,

"We shall not.
We want more.
Let more come,
As always,
From the have-nots."

Amen.

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Notes

Hatfield quote from "How Long Can Oil Supply Grow?" http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/Hatfield_97-4.pdf Professor Hatfield is one of the earliest academics to warn of the impending oil catastrophe. In a recent talk with me, he stated that "it is too late" to warn people. He now eschews public comment on the issue. Another important piece of his appeared in Nature vol. 387, May 1997, "Oil back on the global agenda," reproduced at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2148#comment-144775

Gospel of Matthew quote, variation on 16:18. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/mt/16.html

1 "carbonate reservoirs." Common limestone-type structures holding crude oil. See Simmons, Matthew. Twilight In the Desert. (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2005). Pp 292-5;
"depletion" is a technical term for the rate at which a finite resource is extracted. Depletion begins with the extraction of "the first barrel" (Colin Campbell). http://www.peakoil.net/Colin.html

2 "Cantarell," the largest oil field in the western hemisphere (Mexico), is in rapid decline; "Prudhoe Bay," the famed (or infamous) field on Alaska's North Slope, is also in decline, currently producing 85% water, 15% oil; the problematic "Thunderhorse" field and its damaged platform lie in deep water in Hurricane Alley off the Louisiana coast; "Qatif" ("kah-TEEF") in Saudi Arabia also has issues, namely, deadly hydrogen sulfide gas coupled with dense populations aboveground; the "Kirkuk, East Baghdad, and Rumalia" oil fields are "the spoils of war" in Iraq; "rivers of tar" refers to the energy-intensive and expensive deposits of tar sands (recently euphemized as "oil sands") of the Athabasca River region of Canada.

3 "3-D seismic." A computerized underground imaging technology used in oil prospecting. "[T]he level of detail is sometimes amazing." Deffeyes, Kenneth. Beyond Oil. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005) p.22;
"Ghawar the Great." The largest petroleum deposit on the planet, currently contributing 60% to Saudi Arabia's total extracted crude. Probably in decline. http://home.entouch.net/dmd/ghawar.htm
Ghawar along with the crashing Cantarell field comprise 10% of total world oil productive capacity (Jeffrey Brown). http://www.energybulletin.net/25218.html

4 "horizontal drill bores" are now commonly used in older and offshore fields. http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g115/oil/4.html

5 "nitrogen...floods." Ways of evicting the last oil from the rocks. Referred to affectionately as "Enhanced Oil Recovery." click here

6 "suffocating streams." Othello 3.3.390;
"Buddhist...immolations." http://www.buddhistinformation.com/self_immolation.htm

7 "methane...Persia." Iran shares with Qatar the enormous North Dome/South Pars natural gas field, the largest in the world. http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html#gas
"entropic." Most of the energy we extract is "lost"(!) http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php (See right side of diagram). See also: Swenson, Rod. "Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Behavior." http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution10.html "[T]he system will select the path ...that ... maximizes the entropy at the fastest rate given the constraints."

7-10 "Methane becomes..."
http://www.petrochemistry.net/flowchart/flowchart.htm

8 "anti-LNG...rallies." Everyone wants to increase their electricity consumption, but no one wants liquid natural gas terminals anywhere near them (not that such terminals would make much of a dent in the supply problem anyhow). There will soon be serious problems in North America -- such as blackouts -- as natural gas supply trails off. http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/61031/618

10 "agrochemical." http://www.petrochemistry.net

11 "PVC medical technologies." Polyvinyl chloride is ubiquitous in the medical industry. (ibid.)

12 "bunker fuel." http://www.eia.doe.gov/glossary/glossary_b.htm

14 "Thinsulate." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinsulate
"the grand chessboard." See Michael Klare, "The Tripolar Chessboard." http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=92161

15 "Babylonian bitumen." Gen 11:3 (Darby Bible). "And they had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar";
"lignite." An abundant, cheap, atmosphere-destroying form of coal;
"natural gas liquids" are such fuels as propane and butane;
"kerogen...shales." A boondoggle, "the petroleum equivalent of fool's gold." http://www.energybulletin.net/11707.html

16 Joel 2:19.

17 "have-nots."
"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." Matt 13:12 (KJV).