Dinosaur Juice - Fossil Fuel or Fraud?

I read the faded sign as we pulled into town: “Welcome to Hudson’s Hope - Land of Dinosaurs and Dams.” Stencilled beside a happy waterfall were two green brontosauri that appeared to be shooting lazer beams made of oil out of their eyes. Past and future, with this rusting hamlet as epicenter. “Land of Shit,” Shevko corrected. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.” 

It took me a while to draw the connection between dinosaur fossils and their oil by-products. My first thought was about extinction, exploiting our planet’s natural resources past the point of no return. Like the Delorean Time Machine in Back to the Future III, the train bridge up ahead is incomplete and we’re praying technology will save us all, before we hit that fateful precipice and magically teleport elsewhere, or tumble down into a canyon fireball. I was thinking about dinosaurs roaming these very hills, each terrible lizard a cog in the Wheel of Life. Did those reptilian heathens summon their own demise at the forefront of a life-ending comet by merely surviving? Do we not deserve an even worse finish for our deliberate consumer greed and unsustainable habits? But here in the Backyard, it’s no place for theoretical debate. We’re here to make money, exploiting that sweet, sweet dinosaur juice that simmers somewhere beneath our heavy winter work-boots.

(Jurassic Park ™ Flowchart)

Now, hold on. Does fuel actually come from fossils? I’m no scientist (although out here as a Well-Tester I pretend to be) and I don’t burn shit up on a burner, but were there really enough dinosaurs – or even plant life – to create the billions and billions of known oil reserves? Or is it just a nice story that roughnecks and oil executives tell their kids at bedtime? Well, apparently the jury is divided. Just like most other scientific “facts”, there are the mainstream theories and the fringe theories, stubbornly honking at each other like some Maiosaura protecting her eggs.

The mainstream theory of oil formation (biogenic/ fossil fuels) holds that oil originated millions of years ago in shallow seas as vast quantities of organic matter that died and sank into the mud to decompose. Over time as the source rock was buried deeper, overburden pressure raised temperatures into the “oil window” (80-100°C) enabling crude oil to form, become fluid, and migrate upward through the rock strata in a process called “oil expulsion”. The oil was eventually trapped in underground reservoirs where it was to remain, patiently awaiting Mankind’s Crazy-Straw to slurp it up, give it purpose and fulfill its destiny.

The other side supports the abiogenic hypothesis (developed before palaeontology), which argues that petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating way back to the formation of the Earth, and suggests that there exists a great deal more petroleum than commonly thought. The evidence for naturally occurring petroleum, slim as it may be, flies in the face of Peak Oil proponents, suggesting that oil is actually regenerative. I smell a Nerd Fight!

Years of production left in the ground with the current proved reserves (according to mainstream biogenic theory):

·       Coal: 148 years

·       Oil: 43 years

·       Natural gas: 61 years

Lifespan of our favourite extinct dinosaurs (according to mainstream palaeontology):

·       Velociraptor: 20 years

·       Triceratops: 100 years

·       Brachiosaurus: 300 years

Here on-site, glancing at the surrounding pipe-maze, I feel myself getting old. And I imagine the natural gas and oil being separated beneath my feet and sent off through the woods to be processed. On an average day, this lease that I'm monitoring produces about $30,000 worth of petroleum. I wonder what the equivalent is in pounds of dinosaur bones. How many Stegosaurus constitute a barrel? And what will become of the skeletons of mankind in three hundred million years? Will an advanced reptilian humanoid population employ their lot of part-time criminal, full-time rednecks to pump our remaining essence into a fuel source, full circle? 

I guess only time will tell.

Respect is a Dish Best Served Cold

The rusted iron head of the sledgehammer arced through frigid air, an unnatural extension of my core flowing energy slickly through my electric arms and into the gear's sweet spot. The pipe’s union chimed its hellish bell and finally spun tight.

“There! You see?” The Bosnian hulk in dark coveralls shouted and in the orange light from the scorching flare stack his carotid artery bulged through an ink dragon. He was called Shevko and possessed a ferocious intensity, most likely invigorated by the steroids that he also dealt. “That’s why you never give up!”

Together we had solved a puzzle, assembling the labyrinth of flow-line pipe that rushed crude oil up through the wellhead and into the pressure tank (where it’s monitored and regulated before being shipped off towards production). My sledgehammer violently secured the last tricky angle, locking the rigging into working order. Beyond the rumbling and clanking of heavy machinery, the lease was peaceful, gusts of snow spraying like geysers across the silver hunter’s moon. 

Five or six conversations into our first drive North, charging down the turbulent back-roads in his supped-up Dodge Ram, he told me about a moonlit drug deal gone bad in a vacant park: a sixth sense of approaching danger and narrowly escaping a hit squad, sliding out as three big black Escalades with 26” rims pulled up. A simple meeting to deliver a message from a friend on the Inside had apparently turned into a near brush with violence from a group that was not to be trifled with. It was the United Nations, he told me with a glance from the corner of his eye.

Gnarly, I told him, but why would a bunch of diplomats from the world’s governing body be after you? This was one of the rare occasions that I made him laugh. As it happens, the UN was also the name of a fearsome gang from Vancouver marauding through oil country: a.k.a, the Global United Nations Syndicate (GUNS). They provide the drugs and prostitutes for rig-pigs, and kill who needs killin’. Friends in high places or just different kinds of highs. Shevko looks about as badass as they come, so I took his fictional-sounding tale at face value. He said nothing about my commentary on whether life imitates art or art imitates life. Talking time was over and a hand emblazoned with a grinning skull cranked back up the System of a Down.

Eventually I learned that Shevko has a ten-year old daughter with a crack-head to whom he pays child support. He grew up on a farm outside of Sarajevo and immigrated to Canada when the war with Serbia ignited in the mid-90s. He claims to find the never-ending, desperately materialistic Pursuit for the Bigger Toy ridiculous, and calls its adherents, “Nimrods”. He hopes to take his silicone-tittied girlfriend and move to a lake someday, buy a boat that’s just fast enough. Just strong enough.

But I lost him on my oration about the excesses of capitalism.

Then a moose popped out of the snowy ditch and Shevko slammed on the brakes. The massive beast was galloping across the road at a languid 45-degree angle, its long brown legs seeming to move in slow motion behind the hulking rack of antlers that glowed in the halogen light. The truck skidded down to 50kph and for a moment kept pace with the graceful animal, its body lined up directly with the windshield. Five or six seconds after it vanished into the woods, Shevko let off honking the horn. “What a fucking shit show.” He said in his thick Slavic accent, shaking his head as we carried on towards the lease.

Just a few weeks ago, he’d hit one on this same stretch of road. One moment you’re leaning over the steering wheel in the dark before the dawn, squinting into the near distance through fourteen-hour-shift eyes. The next, a moose is crumpling your truck’s front end and you’ve went from 80kph to 5 in just over a second, as if the animal had a concrete foundation, and the moose is flying away, twenty feet through the frosty morning air and sprawling its wasted bulk at the end of your high beams. The moose tries to stand up but it’s flailing, in shock. It kicks its muscular legs a few final times. Frantic eyes search for understanding. Then it dies, as you unclip your seatbelt and stumble out into the snow to call 911. Just another casualty in man’s war against the environment.

Meanwhile, Shevko’s black market home business was booming. His ex-stripper girlfriend was processing more orders than ever, new unknown clientele referred by so-and-so, and he was beginning to sense the early stages of paranoia. I warned him about getting too big for his britches, reminded him of the tug-of-war between greed and moderation. I advised him to start using those disposable cell-phones you buy from Mac’s to make his business calls (I saw that on The Wire). The Big Brother satellite grid is omnipresent if you let it and pseudo-omniscient, able to record every cell-phone conversation and scan for key threat words. "The technology is in use," I tell him, "and while the chances of you getting red-flagged by authorities of a higher level than you may be slim, you’re better safe than sorry."

"Also," I said, "you should think about investing your dirty money into the stock market. Laundering your ill-got means through a well-diversified portfolio." I stopped short of recommending my father, an investment advisor with morals. But Shevko considered my criminal wisdom sound, and the nod he gave me indicated I’d reached the front door to the House of Respect. 

Misadventures in Oil Country

Like clockwork, the crow makes its flyby over the oil well and the grinding and groaning machines and men all working in unison to pillage the Earth of its resources. Then the big black bird forces its way into a big black garbage bag and, it too, takes what it wants. Outraged, a burly redneck in filthy coveralls shouts, "nigger-chicken," and chases it away - the irony as thick as crude. 

Resting the frosty sledgehammer on my shoulder, I glance around the lease at the thirty-man crew and, for a moment, we could be anywhere in time or space: ploughing a Viking ship through the Arctic; blasting a path for the Canadian Pacific railroad through the Rocky Mountains; or drilling for rare alien minerals on another planet. Always the chain of command, orders and obedience; spine- and mind-bending labour. Men far home, dreaming of their families, watching the reflections of their goals in every flake of snow. Or throttling hard through every motion, meditative; mind completely present. Sure, the details may change, but the mission - the methodical mayhem - well, the memory loops on and on. Grunts and their captains, timeless as the sand. 

And here in the wilderness of north-western Alberta, the sand underground is packed with the substance that fuels the global economy - that drives the engines of industry and sustains the world we know. Sweet, sweet dinosaur juice, baby: petroleum. The essence of the terrible lizard in our trucks and TV’s, tyrannosaurus blood in the wires. Legacy systems that should be obsolete (if our markets were driven by true, outside-the-box innovation) continue to dominate. And there’s big money in it. Which is why I’m here – to pay off my student loans in record time.

Figures and Facts

In case you need a refresher on what the hell is going on: “The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing petroleum products”.

·      The United States consumes by far the most crude oil in the world at 18,800 barrels per day, or, as much as the next four countries (China, Japan, India, and Russia) combined.

o   Canada is tenth on the list at 2,150 barrels per day.

·      One barrel of crude oil equals 160 litres, roughly equivalent to the volume of liquid held by a standard bathtub.

o   Barrel is more of an American term anyway, the standard in Canadian oil production is cubic metres, or “cubes”.

o   A typical Canadian oil well might produce 50 barrels of oil per day – nearly eight cubic metres.

·      Wells also produce natural gas – what many out here agree is the future of the petroleum industry.

o   A cube of natural gas is about the space taken up by a standard kitchen range and a typical well produces 9,600 cubes per day.

Canada exports approximately 200 million barrels of crude oil annually to the United States – or – imagine ¾ of Canada’s population draining their bubble baths south of the border. And water may very well be the next political commodity, but we’ll get to that later…

So here I am in North America’s Saudi Arabia, a willing participant in the pillage of our planet’s natural resources. University and theory and environmentalist critique taught me to almost condemn the petroleum industry. But up here in the “Backyard,” surrounded by part-time criminals and full-time rednecks, I’m learning another side to the story.