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.