Oxycontin And Oil: Two Tales Of Addiction

1)  We had left home two days before, but had hardly been anywhere outside of either the car or the hotel room. Scattered on the dresser was an assortment of pills -- prescription opioids of every description. They were dumped out like a kid's candy on Halloween night. It was a festival of numbness.

I had been awake for over 24 hours, but had been fully alert for almost none of them. I had recently discovered the joys of crushing and snorting Oxycontin -- the champagne of cheap prescription highs. I slowly surveyed the remaining drugs... morphine mostly, with a healthy mix of methadone and some other things... but I had been snorting. Nothing makes the buzz come faster than crushing and snorting an Oxy. Well... nothing that doesn't involve a needle, anyway.

This is perhaps the only matter that I will ever wholeheartedly agree with Rush Limbaugh on. Oxycontin is fucking great.

We were out of Oxys. I half-seriously considered waking (if in fact "asleep" applied in the normal sense) the naked beauty on the bed to see if we could get more. Normally contemplating the generous curve of her hips would have me thinking other things. And sure, there was still plenty of other junk left, but I know what I like. Besides, the feeling was starting to return to my extremities.. and what kind of a vacation is that?

But then I saw it. Ground into the carpet was one last Oxycontin, trampled in our rush to get back into the room with our drugs. I sat on the bed for a long time (or so it seemed -- everything takes a long time on a good Oxy buzz) contemplating my options. I didn't like what I was becoming. But the sensation... or perhaps the lack of it... was simply too good a time to neglect. I also contemplated my dignity, and whether or not I wanted illegal brain chemistry to be the driving force in my life.

Eventually, I got up and wobbled over to the crushed tablet. I stuck my nose down on the carpet. I smelled powder and carpet cleaner and sneakers and dirt. And I snorted as hard as I could, taking in every last speck of pill and carpet fibre I could inhale.

I ran to the bathroom and gagged, as often happens when one snorts these things. I would have vomited if there had been anything left in me, but it had been a long time since I had eaten. And then I wobbled to the bed and laid down, watching The Weather Network and drooling, unsure of where the remote control was, and unmotivated to look for it.

And for a little while, things were good again.

2) A recent report from the US Geological Survey indicates that The Arctic holds 90 billion barrels of untapped oil... enough to keep the world's appetite for it fuelled for three whole years, most of it in Canada! And Alberta's Oil Sands are loaded with oil, at a cost of only 80 kilos of greenhouse gases for every barrel produced!

Let the good times keep rolling!

Sympathy For The Diesel - A Love Letter To (Most Of) The People In Oil And Gas

A recent article in The Globe And Mail attempts to explain the peculiar mood among the people of the oil and gas industry in Calgary. Despite record oil prices and record profits, there is an unusual mood of unease among the individuals working in the industry.

Unfortunately, I think an otherwise thoughtful and well-written piece has mostly missed the point. The usual concerns that make the Business section of a newspaper are all there: will prices hold? Is now a good time to make an acquisition? Do we expand, or stand pat? Will there be new regulatory concerns? And so on.

I believe there's another reason for the frowns and worry lines crossing the faces of oil and gas people here in Calgary. The same article, written for the Lifestyles section of the paper, would have an entirely different spin. Yes, there is a dark mood brewing among the people who work in the petrochemical business here. I've seen this mood a lot, having recently had the chance to work among a large number of Calgary's oil and gas people. And, for the most part, I don't believe any of it is directly caused by any of the above stated reasons.

Even in a relatively open and democratic company structure, decisions about company strategy are not usually the concern of most employees. For every one high-level decision maker, there are many engineers and secretaries and assistants and accountants and receptionists and so on. They are in the majority, and I believe their general mood is slowly filtering upwards, as opposed to the usual "boss has a bad day, everyone has a bad day" dynamic.

And why is this? Not only are the underlings the ones who have to struggle with three dollar loaves of bread, expensive gasoline, and ever-dimming public opinion . The main reason is entirely simple, and I can demonstrate it to you in four simple steps:

1) Find someone who is an employee of an oil and gas company. Start a conversation with this: "So... how long have you been working in oil and gas?" Your test subject will then answer with "(X number of) years."

2) Refer to the following handy table, showing the change in price per barrel since back in the day:

CHANGE IN PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL IN THE LAST X YEARS ("Y")

Since 20 years ago: +580%
15 years ago: +400%
10 years ago: +360%
5 years ago: +370%
4 years ago: +380%
3 years ago: +210%
2 years ago: +185%
1 years ago: +140%

3) Ask your friend/neighbor/acquaintance: "So, in X years of work, has your income increased by Y, just like the price of the commodity you work with?"

(Trust me, the answer will be "no." Anyone in oil and gas who is in a position to say "yes" isn't going to be getting involved in a personal conversation with riff-raff like you or me.)

4) Then ask: "And during that X number of years, do you find you've been working harder, or less hard at your job?"

(The answer here is almost certainly going to be "harder.")

5) Pause thoughtfully... perhaps rubbing your chin in a scholarly manner... and say something like: "Hmmm. In a free market, SOMEONE must be getting rich off of what you do. I guess it isn't you though. How does that make you feel?"

Now, sit back and enjoy the show as the truth of the matter... whether the person you are talking to has consciously thought of it in these terms or not... bubbles to the surface like Jed Clampett's Texas Tea.

Of course the world needs energy. The problem is petro-power is not the energy being most egregiously wasted here. There is a source of energy more powerful (and less exploited) in Alberta that could change things for the better. Here: Public Image Ltd. wrote a song about it back in the 80s... when oil was 20 bucks a barrel...

I Have Found Salvation!

My friends. My dear, dear Friends:

I have been away from you, walking the dark paths of my own soul. But I return to you Enlightened, and bearing a message of Salvation.

I have given my heart to Our Lady And Saviour... Mothra.

Whenever the nefarious King Ghidorah attacks Earth... usually starting with Japan... all it ever takes is for someone to open their heart to the eternal warmth and love of Our Gigantic Insectoid Mistress, chant her sacred song... and Mothra will arise to smite the menace.

Unlike other religions, this actually works, and I can prove it.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach recently announced that Alberta would be collecting almost-but-not-quite reasonable royalties from Big Oil. Big Oil had previously said they would take their money and go away if Stelmach did this.

Naturally, as all Albertans, I was quaking in terror at the thought of the petro-giants taking Alberta's Big Money Fix away.

Immediately after Ed made his announcement, I fell to my knees in prayer to Mothra, that we all may be saved.

And guess what? Petro-Canada has announced that they're still gonna buy oil from us, like they needed it or something!


Praise you Mothra. We are weak, but you are strong.

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We Have To Stop Meeting Like This

The Alberta NDP is demanding that Premier Ed Stelmach release information about a closed-door meeting with oil execs.

"Government spokesman Tom Olsen says the premier hasn’t met with any energy industry officials since the royalty report was released, but the deputy premier is willing to identify who he’s met with from the energy sector."

Oh, I get it. You didn't shoot anyone, but that darned bullet of yours sure did...

Stelmach was always big on the whole "open and transparent" and transparent thing. It's just a shame that by "open and transparent" the Conservative government was talking about being "open and transparent" about it's complete contempt for the voters or sustainability.

Maybe Ed needs to get some quick bullshit PR for hire mercenaries to parachute in and save his ass...

Encana Killed Santa Claus: A Reasoned Response To The Alberta Royalties Issue

The level-headed responses to The Alberta Oil Revenues issue keep pouring in:

-Canadian National Resources says they'll cut drilling operations up to 65 percent.

-Petro-Canada (Remember? The guys who were supposed to be looking after our national interests? Me neither) Boss Ron Brenneman: "...acknowledged the system should 'share the upside' with Albertans through higher royalties when prices are high.

'But right now at current prices, investment can't tolerate much higher royalties."

...which raises questions about which alternate universe Ron fills his tank in.

Prime Minister Harper, in a sudden display of common sense (at least politically), is staying the hell away from the issue.

It's time for reason and common sense to prevail equally on ALL sides of this issue. In that spirit, I offer this sane and wise counter-punch:

Encana killed Santa Claus.

Calgary's annual Santa Claus parade, originally planned for November 18th this year has now been canceled. This is because traffic downtown is hopelessly bunged up (as it will be for a year) in order to construct the breathtakingly fugly Bow Building, which looks like it was designed by a cyborg Albert Speer.

In the meantime, Christmas will still arrive as scheduled in Venezuela.

Is Big Oil As Smart As A Chimp?

Interesting things happen when you teach chimps to play with tokens.

Chimps, it seems, are better at some decision-making processes than humans. Imagine a game where you are given X number of tokens. You then offer Player 2 Y percentage of those tokens... 50 percent or 5 percent or 80 percent or whatever, your choice. A human player of this game will usually offer up something around 50 percent of the take. Humans also have a tendency to reject an offer if it falls well below the 50 percent threshold, even though rejecting that offer means that the human in question gets nothing. In other words, the average human will tend to reject a gift of twenty bucks from someone like Donald Trump. A chimp, on the other hand, will gladly take Trump's twenty without question and go spend it... or whatever chimps do with their money.

It's a little like the current situation the Alberta government is in -- except the chips are petroleum, and Alberta has all the chips.

In (I swear!) completely unrelated news, Canadian Natural Resources has joined the ranks of those petroleum companies who want to take their bat and ball and go play somewhere else if Alberta dares to increase oil revenues to match reasonable standards elsewhere.

My analogy may be a little weak, I admit. After all, chimps are not noted for having the grasp of language, culture and psychology required to be deceptive bastards like oil companies and other humans.

Also: Do you think Ed Stelmach has fully grasped what a shitty job his party has done of diversifying the Provincial economy yet?



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Let's Go Crazy: Time To Play The Chavez Card?

The downtrodden, Dickensian waifs of Big Oil continue to pout and wail at the notion that Alberta might actually dare ask for a proper share of petroleum revenues. Weighing in recently: Pedro van Meurs in the Financial Post, who used to run an oil company. He figures the situation can be worked out.

"'What Americans don't understand is that the two systems are very different. In the U.S. system, the royalty rate is written in your lease; it's a contractual agreement. In Alberta, that is not the case. An Alberta lease says you shall pay whatever royalty the government decides from time to time.'

'Statoil, Shell, Total have good lawyers and know perfectly well that Alberta's royalties can change," he said. "Leases are loud and clear. The province doesn't even have to consult."'

Which is all fine and well, except that of course The Financial Post feels compelled to end with:

"Of course, that's all very well and good, but the oil companies also have the right to not do business in Alberta either. That's why an industry-government commission must arbitrate a fair deal."

This is Diane Francis writing, after all... not Santa Claus. But humour me: go read that article, then read this. Does charging the same percentage royalty for a well near Edmonton as you would for a well near El Paso really seem so greedy or ill-advised, particularly since even an increased cut for Alberta still means lucrative write-offs for start-up costs?

Since there's so much Oil Industry fear-mongering going around of late, I thought I'd do a little freelance work and throw out something shocking to get Big Oil's attention.

Hugo Chavez.

That's right: dreaded South American strongman, part-time crackpot, and enemy of foreign investment, Hugo Chavez. He nationalized the oil industry in Venezuela. He didn't increase royalties, he didn't take away investment incentive... he bloody well nationalized it. Foreign investment in Venezuela's petroleum industry is (technically) illegal. Surely, no true Albertan would want something that radical, would they? After all, that would drive away business.

So: why is Venezuela America's Number Four supplier of oil?

My guess is that it's because America is jonesing for oil, and Venezuela has it. And I'm guessing America pays for it with the same cash they buy oil from Alberta or Saudi Arabia or Cote D'Ivoire with.

So, anyway, Big Oil... you were saying something about leaving...?

Render Unto Big Oil: Hill & Knowlton Whitens Your Sepulchres

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."
-Matthew 23:27

No one should be surprised that the petroleum companies are threatened by the Alberta government's admission they they should be charging more for the hand jobs, and no one should be surprised that The National Post is in the front row of the cheerleaders. Today's Post nicely manages to compare increased royalties to the crucifixion of Christ under the emperor Tiberius.

(By the way, if the Canadian public applied The Tiberius Standard Of Accuracy to The National Post, that paper would have been thrown to its death ages ago...)

So, who defends the moneyed interests, when the money needs defending? Some soldiers fight for a cause, others do it for money. We call those soldiers "mercenaries"... those who kill for profit. And Alberta's petroleum interests have hired one of the biggest and baddest mercenary armies out there: Hill & Knowlton.

Hill & Knowlton is the international PR firm behind getitrightalberta.ca, a polished and professional web site disguising itself as a grassroots movement of Alberta pro-oil citizens that sprang up seemingly overnight in response to the Alberta oil royalties issue. This underscores Hill & Knowlton's "24x7x365" readiness to respond to a crisis. Of course, we aren't talking about the kind of crisis where things are burning down and lives are threatened... we're talking about the kind of crisis where the livestock suddenly demands slightly better feed. Business Edge even ends their article on the matter with the phrase "Can Alberta get it right in 2007?"

The fear and rhetoric building up around the Oil Royalties issue reminds me of the buildup of fear and falsehoods about Iraq before the invasion(s). And maybe that's not entirely coincidental.

In 1991, many were moved by the testimony of a semi-anonymous "Nurse Nariyah" who testified to a Congressional hearing that "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." What was lost amongst the tears and outrage is that "Nurse Nariyah" was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and that H&K coached her to say things even the Kuwaitis knew at the time weren't true, in order to justify the invasion.

Our dependency on oil is a bad habit. Hill & Knowlton has lots of practice at defending those. In 1954, H&K helped the tobacco industry try to dismiss the recent notion that smoking might not be such a good idea. And let's not forget Hill & Knowlton's stirring defense of torturers, corporate criminals, Enron, Scientology, and polluters, among others.

Will Albertans (and their government) cringe in superstitious terror about losing their oil money, or will they realize that oil is money... more so than ever... and it doesn't belong to the companies to extract it and sell it, any more than a pimp owns his prostitutes?

Big Oil: Still Hungry For Beaver

Some petroleum companies operating in Alberta, according to today's Calgary Sun, have actually figured out that people are still hungry for oil. While Encana still pouts and threatens to take its money and go play in someone else's sandbox, Enbridge vice-president Richard Bird says "We're doubtful the royalty variable is going to be the make-or-break economic variable in those decisions."

Oil still runs the world, and ask any addict: the hand that supplies the crack rules the world. Even the oil companies themselves seem to be having a harder time than anticipated swallowing that, unlike Paul Jackson, who may have thrown himself behind a rapidly-losing cause. Paul, like much of the Alberta Establishment, is more than willing to keep licking corporate boots in exchange for the occasional bit of change that accidentally falls on his head.

For those of you (like Paul) who fall to their knees in superstitious terror at the thought of the petro-teat being removed, there's always getitrightalberta.ca. It's a web site started by regular, ordinary Joes like you and me to help save Big Oil from the scraping peasants of Alberta.

Regular, ordinary Joes who, as daveberta.ca points out, just happen to be Hill & Knowlton, a big PR firm that specializes in (among other things) rapid, made-to-order spin control for large interests when they feel threatened by the rabble. I'm sure these people are serious, concerned Albertans, and their area code and address is just some sort of typo.

Thanks, Dave, for doing the job that the local media don't seem to have time for. Boot-licking can be awfully time-consuming.

Since this may be the only time I mention petrochemicals and "beaver" in the same blog entry, here's a plastic cowboy video for all the Albertans out there: "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" by Primus...

Paul Jackson: Blaming The Liberals Makes Us All Richer

Calgary Sun columnist Paul Jackson would blame The Liberal Party for Alberta's abject financial woes.

Alberta -- sitting on near Saudi-sized reserves of petroleum -- has clearly been screwed economically. The clear evidence is there. Paul mentions that Alberta has the country's strongest economy (oh, right, no he doesn't) while mooning over his big autographed picture of Brian and Mila Mulroney.

A note for non-Albertans: back in the 70s and 80s there was a thing brought in by the Federal government called The National Energy Program. Long story short: Alberta was making a lot of money, the rest of the country was hurting, so some of the wealth was redistributed. Ever since then, Albertans like Jackson have complained that the NEP "collapsed Alberta's economy and started a recession that swept coast-to-coast."

In fact, the NEP was so evil that it did that to most of the world's economy. Of course, during the same period of time I was a college student, so maybe that's why Germany's economy was running so rough at the time.

Paul Jackson goes on to complain that the NEP cost Alberta "a good $100 billion, or so is the case when one gets all of one's statistics from Brian Mulroney. By my math, that means someone owes me about 50 grand.

Lousy left-wingers, where's my SUV?

With luck Paul will pick up his own paper today and read the front-page story about how Alberta's oh-so-Conservative government sat back knowingly while losing out on nine billion dollars in oil revenue over a three-year period alone. Auditor-general Fred Dunn says, in a masterpiece of Canadian understatedness: "The principles of transparency and accountability, I believe, were not followed." Or in other words... "folks, looks like you got screwed."

Good thing I don't have that SUV. The infrastructure around town is starting to look pretty shaky. I suppose all the road crews are Liberals too...