Oil Business

The blowout of British Petroleum's deep sea oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is a bill come due for the people of the Gulf Coast. For the people of Louisiana and Texas,at least, it is a bill that we thought would never have to be paid.

I have lived most of my life on the upper Texas Gulf Coast, in the midst of one of the largest concentrations of petroleum-related industrial activity in the world. In the sixties, when I lived there, the motto of Port Arthur, Texas, a refinery town situated on the Louisiana border, was "We Oil the World!" In those days, the environmental degradation that accompanied the production of petroleum products was seen as a minor inconvenience that was more than compensated for by the prosperity attendant to the "awl bidness." When I complained to my father about the toxic fumes that permeated the air of Port Arthur, he told me that the putrid hydrocarbon odors that made me gag were "the smell of money." This attitude was widespread among Gulf Coast residents who worked in the industry. As time went on, people became more aware of the environment, the attitude of those in the oil business changed slightly--now the story was that the risks posed by the production, transportation, and refining of crude oil could be protected against by technical means and--not to worry--the industry was doing just that.

At no time in my memory were the people of Louisiana and Texas (the two Gulf Coast states that were most involved in oil) ever told by their leaders that we had made a bargain with the rest of the country to accept the environmental harm inherent in petroleum extraction in return for money. Indeed, here on the Gulf Coast, the evironmentalists on the east and west coasts who refused to allow drilling off their coasts were seen as impractical, privileged aesthetes who didn't have enough entrepreneurial gumption to exploit the resources around them. Occasionally someone would point out the hypocrisy of Yankees who drove SUVs but didn't want to see a drilling rig from their beach house, but this trope was not generally pursued because, if you thought about it very long, it necessarily implied that we Gulf Coasters who welcomed the chance to foul our land and waters in order to provide fuel for Northern suburbanites were, in fact, the suckers in the deal.

Now, the note has been called. The marshes and estuaries of the Louisiana coast are becoming more polluted every day. Hundreds of thousand gallons of crude oil are pouring into the open Gulf and will continue to do so for months. While Texas waters have not yet been affected, they no doubt will be. The beaches of the Florida Panhandle, as white as sugar, will soon be blackened, despite the fact that Florida never sold its soul to the awl bidness. And after a hundred years of serfdom, Gulf Coasters can't afford to extract ourselves from this bargain with the devil. Our politicians demand that the federal government allow continued offshore drilling despite the BP disaster, because that's the only way we know to earn a living. Decisions have consequences, but I wish that had told us what the deal was.

Suburbia

It's often tempting to see (for me at least) to see short-term crises as symptomatic of major change, but as I've noted before I think we are at the beginning of a real change in the American culture as a result of the end of cheap oil. It looks as though high gas prices are triggering the end of the suburban America in which the Baby Boom and subsequent generations have lived our entire lives. It seems possible that 10 or 20 years American cities will look very different from the sprawling middle class suburbs we are used to, with the rich in center cities, the poor occupying the outer ring of abandoned middle class subdivisions, and the various middle class strata arranged in rings between them.

$4 Gas

Unlike other Americans, Texans are accustomed to seeing high oil prices as a good thing. Historically, enough of us have had oil under our land, worked in the oil business, or sold things to people who worked in the oil business, that we tended to see to see every uptick in the price of a barrel of West Texas crude as another dollar in our pocket. During the oil bust of the early 80s, bumper stickers on Texans' pick-ups prayed plaintively, "Lord, please bring back $30 oil. I promise I won't piss it away this time." Back in 1990, when Poppy Bush was getting ready to go to war against Saddam Hussein the first time, a number of us were heard to mutter under our breaths that we weren't sure why it was in Texas's interest to fight a war to lower the price of oil.

However, the current surge in oil prices has been a little different. In the decades since the last oil boom, Texas oil fields have played out, the Texas economy has diversified, and Texas suburbs have sprawled further and further. As a result, more Texans see the current run-up in petroleum prices through the lens of the higher gas prices they pay at the pump, the same way their fellow Americans do. I, however, think that $4 gas is a good thing.

Americans have been exhorted to conserve oil since the OPEC oil boycott of the 70s, to no avail. We've continued to commute from more distant subdivisions in more gigantic vehicles. But this price surge seems to be getting folks' attention. The buses are more crowded. More bikes are on the streets. The state agency I work for is allowing more of us to work from home. People seem to actually be changing the way they live. A change this big will be difficult, but I think that $4 gas is starting to make it happen.