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Jett Rink: "I'm a rich 'un."
Giant
for release 09-25-05
Washington D.C.
When I was born in 1948, benchmark Texas intermediate crude oil sold for $3.00 per barrel. As a child I lived in Abilene, Texas and my step-father was a petroleum geologist. We ate and slept the oil business. There were always long strips of drilling logs and little white cotton bags of core samples laying around.
During my teen years, I began absorbing a few of the facts of life concerning the oil business. Even at three bucks a barrel, you could make some big money if you drilled a successful well. Even a 1/32 interest in a well that hit was worth thousands per month. So people were getting rich if they were skilled or lucky enough.
Among our family friends in Abilene was Jack Grimm. He was my mother's bridge partner. I hung out with his kids and his wife, Jackie, was a major encouragement to me as a budding young journalist, because she was a writer also.
Jack Grimm, was a West Texas wildcatter. He was one of those who was either smart or lucky enough to find his share of oil in Texas and Oklahoma. He made millions, even at $3.00 a barrel. But he searched for other treasures at his own great expense. He searched for Noah's Ark in Turkey. He searched for the Titanic in the North Atlantic. He searched for Big Foot and just before he died at 72, he had commissioned a monument on the scale of Mt. Rushmore to be sculpted on a mesa at Buffalo Gap, just outside Abilene. It was to be an Indian on a horse looking across the prairie.
Jack told me one time, "There's plenty of oil down under Texas, and if we're smart that's where we will let it stay."
This was in the early '60's and oil had risen to the breathtaking price of $3.10 per barrel. I was about 16 at the time. In sixteen years the price of oil had risen a whopping ten cents.
I also had an uncle who was a geophysicist. He worked for an American oil company. This American oil company also had part ownership in Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company. They sent my uncle to Arabia to do oil exploration. He told me the same thing that Jack Grimm had told me. There was plenty of oil under Texas and Oklahoma. The problem was that the domestic oil was under limestone and shale and the Middle Eastern oil was under sand. It was much easier to extract. The strategy of the American oil companies was to exploit these easier to access supplies and leave our harder to mine reserves intact.
The Saudis were smart. They teamed up with other oil exporting companies in 1965 and formedOPEC. And then they gradually leveraged control of their oil from American ownership to Saudi ownership. At this point the price of oil sharply increased. Then the U.S. government regulated the price of domestic oil, making it sell for less than the world market price. This made domestic exploration less than financially wise, thus discouraging it. This is part of the oil companies' strategy.
Now the price of oil is pushing $70 per barrel. Jack Grimm would have loved it. He was already a millionaire at $3.00 a barrel. I'm thinking about James Dean in the movie Giant. There must be a bunch of oil company execs who are feeling like Jett Rink these days. Oil company profits are at an all time record. There are probably numerous factors for the increase in oil prices and why you are paying close to four dollars at the pump for gas. These factors include increased demand because of industrialization in China and India, profiteering by the oil companies, perhaps Peak Oil is not a fantasy, wars, and oh yes, did I mention profiteering by the oil companies?
The Poet's Eye sees that oil and the quest for its control is what will determine the world picture for the rest of my lifetime and probably for the lifetime of my children. I hope human ingenuity intervenes and we figure out a better way to run the planet than on oil. It's harder to sell sunlight by the barrel.
Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But I'm running behind
--Jackson Browne
