By Mickey Walker-November 6, 2011
I grew up in one of the world’s largest petroleum-processing
centers: Port Arthur, Texas. Refineries lined the Gulf of Mexico
from Florida to Brownsville with heaviest concentrations from Houston to
Eastern Louisiana. Important
offshore oil wells have been productive for as long as I can remember. The standard of living for all our
families up and down the food chain was high per capita, maybe the highest in
the nation for almost all of the 20th Century and beyond. The bad news was that you got to smell
the skunk cabbage air while brushing your teeth, driving to work, ergo most of
your waking hours. But it was not
fatal, we were told, and the mind quickly filtered it out of our collective
consciousness, we forgot about it, and we worked and prospered and had fun in
the sun and Oleanders near the sea.
Port Arthur was unique. On the sea coast of South East Texas, it made for a splendid
port. Ships arrived and sailed
from all points of the compass as exports of gasoline and imports of crude oil
made for heavy traffic in a new multi-billion dollar business of oil and oil
products. The perfect seaport for
commerce fit hand in glove to the discovery of the Spindletop Oilfield in 1901
just 17 miles north near the present city of Beaumont, Texas. What a bonus, what an opportunity for
capital investment.
Spindletop Oilfield Historical Articles (http://www.history.com/topics/spindletop http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dos03 )
From the ocean at land’s end at Sabine Pass to the mouth of
the Neches River to Beaumont made a very convenient waterway to ship crude oil
to the seaport of Port Arthur for refining into gasoline and thousands of
oil-based products yet to come. Many big oil companies built giant refineries there on the Port Arthur
seaport: The Texas Company
(Texaco), Exxon (earlier Enco, Esso), and Gulf Oil all had their beginnings
there with new refineries to process the large supply of oil in their own
backyards, so to speak. The famous
Melon family of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania financed and ended up with a
controlling share of Gulf Oil Company. Oddly, but not really, Gulf Oil was headquartered in Pittsburg. Everything seems to follow the money,
what?
Mass migration from the rural farms brought many families to
Gulf Coast of upper Texas. Oilfield
and refinery pay was good, the standard of living was high for workers, and
jobs were plentiful. A new era had
begun. Now an abundant and cheap
source of new energy was available to millions. Gasoline and natural gas even
drove the generators that made electricity for the home, a new and useful
answer to darkness with the advent of the electric light. Many of my ancestors had moved from the
country dirt roads and cotton patch to Port Arthur when the refineries
mushroomed overnight. They had
never seen an electric light. The
Texas refineries, in their infancy, used mules as the source of propulsion for
wagons necessary to all transport functions within the refinery. My grandfather’s younger brother worked
there in the early 1920s. He said
that the refinery workers would build huge bonfires at night to ward off the
mosquitos. When the fires would
die out and the mosquitos returned, the mules would stir the fire up again by
hoofing the embers so that the mosquitos would be foiled again, at least
temporarily. Smart mules.
In 1940 I was born in Rosebud, Texas to a couple who made a
combined salary of $950.00 per year teaching rural school in Central
Texas. Well, so much for education
opening doors to higher learning and better wages. My father had heard from an uncle who worked at Gulf that
they were hiring laborers at $1600.00 to start out. So in 1944 we all moved to Port Arthur and my father got a
job at Gulf. Growing up in an oil
town seemed desirable. Everyone
had a pretty good job in a booming new industry that paid well and allowed your
father to buy a work car, thus the 2-car family symbol of prosperity was born. Times were good. We Americans used our own crude oil on
American soil. We refined it and
made everything from gasoline to plastics, and the rest of the world watched us
in envy. Anything made in Japan or
(perish the thought) China was cheap and second class to American goods. I remember as a child, I thought that we
were very fortunate to have an abundance of things and goods that made our
lives more pleasurable, such as nice cars, record players, Elvis, and bubble
gum.
But everything changes if enough time passes. Slowly, America began to run out of
oil. Or it became cheaper to buy
oil from the oil-rich Saudis than to drill here at home. When the Saudis lifted the Arab
Embargo, our troubles began. We
became dependent upon the most powerful dope-dealer in the history of the
world: foreign oil.
The reality of the new scarcity known as peak oil (you got
less now than you had yesterday) fell upon us like a giant offshore drilling
rig. Some of the oil giants here
at home were in deep sh--. What
would they do if a source of crude oil could no longer drive the refineries
that required millions a day to operate? The Saudis gave us a taste of what a lack of oil and gas lines would be
like, not to mention higher prices at the pump. It was a Royal setup.
So the Saudis offered Texaco a deal on their oil for a cut
of the Texaco refineries. So right
after the Arab Oil Embargo in the early 1970s the new corporation that was to
refine Texaco’s oil became Star Enterprises. This was a jointly-owned operation now between Texaco and
the Saudis. And the split? Well, the Saudis got half. This silent erosion of American
ownership went unseen, without much fanfare. And it continued every year and presently, too, as we are
held for ransom to do the bidding of those who have the oil that our country
must have or perish from the earth and prove Lincoln wrong.
A new liquid natural gas storage facility was just constructed
in Sabine Pass just a few miles from the old oil refineries, at the cost of
over $1 Billion dollars. The sign
on the gate says Exxon, but the sovereign country of Qatar owns HALF! You know, Qatar, the country that deals
in human slave trade and trafficking? A Billion dollars. Wonder
how many Americans can put their finger on Qatar on a world map? How many Americans are aware of this
unseen takeover of our technology and resources simply because oil is the only
game in town when it comes to world energy?
The United States in 2011 is in debt approaching a figure of
$15 Trillion (I try to capitalize Billion and Trillion just because it seems
appropriate in such times lest we lose touch with the stark reality of where we
as a country seem to be heading). Never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever sense that oil would become such
a significant and powerful commodity in the lives of all humans on planet
earth. I pondered it at times,
reflecting on when gasoline was only 17 cents per gallon, and you and your date
could buy gas, see a movie, and maybe buy some drive-in burgers, all for $5.00. So why is oil so dire a substance in
all our lives now to where we will attack countries, occupy them, fear being
blown up by terrorists, and spend Trillions of dollars on the Middle East
countries in arms sales and foreign aid? The best answer I know of is that oil was made the standard for energy
production. Most all renewable
forms of energy have been smothered with lobbyist dollars so that electric cars
and wind and solar power for electric power plants are totally retarded by
bribes by Big Oil.
Oil is a dirty business in other ways, too. Other than the 100s of thousands of
humans slain every year due to oil or oil geography, oil, when burned produces
toxic smoke and ash. The internal
combustion engine, notwithstanding the idiocy of anti-global warmers such as
the Tea Party and much of the GOP dumb-them-downers, has harmful effects on the
planet. And the only reason a
pseudo-science astro turf company set up by Big Oil, e.g. the Koch Brothers
exists is to say that man is NOT the (or even a) cause of global warming. So why would the Koch’s or anybody else
want to dumb down the search for truth (the very definition of science, itself)? It’s not that hard when you follow the
money. Koch Industries saves
Billions a year for every year they can delay modernizing air and water
polluting equipment at their refineries. And that money not spent on updating equipment to save the planet and
clean up the air we breathe goes directly into the ass pockets of the Koch
Brothers and stockholders. Would
they do that, though? Really? Take it to the bank. They own that, too. And the Democrats are not without sin,
either. Lobbyist dollars to buy
votes buys a good deal of those buggers, too. And they all know it.
When I was burning cheap gasoline as a teenager, I had no
idea that someday oil would be so crucial to the planet. If you have it, fine, but if you don’t
have it, what will it be worth? $5.00 per gallon? $9.50? I fear that we are about to find out.
Next time in Part II we will cover some of the offshoot
business of oil, e.g., the sale of arms to protect world oilfields, the
Pentagon dollars and lives spent to occupy foreign countries rich in oil, and
corporations like Blackwater who Uncle Sam pays billions
of dollars per year with our tax dollars.