Editorial Comment
Confounding communiquésVarious 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:
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.
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- Prices and governmental policies combine to stymie Canadian upstream growth (February 2024)
- U.S. producing gas wells increase despite low prices (February 2024)
- U.S. drilling: More of the same expected (February 2024)
- U.S. oil and natural gas production hits record highs (February 2024)
- U.S. upstream muddles along, with an eye toward 2024 (September 2023)
- Canada's upstream soldiers on despite governmental interference (September 2023)