Dec. 2001 Vol. 222 No. 12  Editorial Comment

Thomas R. Wright, Jr.,  Publisher

Confounding communiqués

Various forms of written communication caught our attention recently, not because they conveyed related messages, but because all included nebulous meanings. An oil industry newspaper provides our first example.

Over the years, we have seen numerous examples of manipulating statistics to "prove" a point, but a recent article in Upstream demonstrated the ultimate in absurdity. Under a headline that screamed "Crude ‘a killer’ for developing states," the paper blithely reported on a study by Oxfam America, which linked poverty and child mortality to oil or mineral exports.

Oxfam, which, we must confess, we have never heard of before, is some sort of charity, according to Upstream. However, it sounds more like a liberal, anti-globalization group, considering its criticism of the World Bank. The group says, "Oil and mining investments are highly profitable for the World Bank, but our research shows they do little to help the poor." Instead, Oxfam says oil and mineral exporting nations have worse records on poverty than countries with similar income levels that are not derived from oil or minerals.

Then, the "charity" goes on to link oil to the troubles in places like Chad and Kazakhstan, claiming that "developing countries dependent upon oil and mineral wealth face a much higher danger of civil war than resource-poor nations in any given five-year period." Isn’t amazing that Oxfam conveniently fails to mention that those dangers were in place well before anybody found oil. Even more amazing is the fact that the group didn’t include the super-rich countries on the Arabian Peninsula, where poverty is nearly nonexistent.

Here’s the reality, Oxfam America – crooks and anarchists will be crooks and anarchists, whether the wealth they are after comes from oil, drugs, diamonds or soybeans. And to link any to the problems of the developing world is preposterous, at best.

A deal’s a deal. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and this column is due Monday. As yours truly was complaining about having to interrupt leisure activities to do office work, my "better half" was lamenting the fact that there were certain domestic chores yet to be finished. Without thinking it through, I responded that I’d do the "job" if she would write the column. You guessed it – she took the challenge. Following is her contribution:

Having been an oilman’s wife forever, it didn’t take me long to decide what to write about. I have listened, on a limited basis, to years and years of pros and cons, arguments, excuses and the bad press that is steadily thrown at the oil industry. The constant complaints about the price of gasoline (editor’s note: isn’t that nice – she didn’t confuse natural gas with gasoline) at the pump is the one subject that upsets me most. But I have a solution.

Yes, I may be "just" a wife, mom and elementary school registrar, but I have known how to fix this problem for years. I’ve even proposed this fix before, but Old-Know-It-All simply tunes me out.

Here’s my proposal: Get rid of all those stupid price per gallon signs on every street corner, and start doing what every grocery store does – hide the price behind some incomprehensible computer bar code. What, you ask yourself, is this ditsy woman talking about? Well, I believe if the oil companies are dumb enough to tout their ever-changing prices on these highly visible signs, then we consumers have little choice but to be constantly reminded of how often the prices go up.

No other industry so blatantly (should I say, stupidly?) advertises its prices on every street corner. For example, what if, upon entering your neighborhood Foodarama, you were immediately bombarded with changeable signs screaming out the rising price of bread, milk, cereal, cookies, etc.? That would give us all reason to complain, "Why last summer, I only paid $3.09 for that box of raisin bran, and now I have to pay $4.59!" If this were the case, we would all be mad at General Mills, Post, etc., instead of ExxonMobil and Shell.

So listen up, Big Oil. Quit advertising your prices so much. It only gives us something to watch and complain about. Chances are that if gasoline prices weren’t so readily known, most of us would just keep on buying it and never give it a second thought. We would probably just scratch our heads, as I do when I wonder why the grocery receipt shows I spent $60.00 more this week than I did only four months ago.

Well, it felt good to get this down on paper, but I had better go check to see if The Publisher got as much relief from getting that soap scum off the shower doors.

She’s right, you know – why does the industry call so much attention to gasoline prices? By the way, the bathroom is about half-clean, which about equates to her contribution to this column. That’s fair, right?

As a publishing company, we receive letters from all over the world, and since the nefarious events of September 11, plus the constant news coverage of anthrax sent through the mail, we’ve become much more suspicious of what the postman delivers. Thus, you may understand our anxiety upon noticing an envelope that came stamped with the following message: "THIS LETTER HAS BEEN MAILED FROM THE WISCONSIN PRISON SYSTEM."

The letter, complete with the inmate’s prison number, included a request for a copy of our Composite Catalog of Oil Field Equipment & Services. Our curiosity of why somebody in Wisconsin, which isn’t exactly an oil or gas drilling state, would want the Composite was heightened even further when the inmate said he was interested in purchasing some dive equipment.

Since the town of Black River Falls is shown as the return address on envelope, perhaps the inmate has devised a plan for "exiting" confinement via a prison storm sewer that empties into the river. On the other hand, maybe we’re becoming too suspicious, and he is simply looking forward to a new career upon release. Inmate no. 386772, a package is on the way.

Comments? Write: editorial@worldoil.com