Image by C Morrison from Pixabay

This article discusses the coming demise of the oil industry and notes the costs associated.

Any summer blockbuster worth its salt features a global disaster montage: a fleet of spaceships hover over world landmarks, asteroids careen into skyscrapers and pyramids, zombies lumber around small towns and mega cities alike. These scenes serve several functions. First, they are an opportunity to blow things up. Second, these montages establish the stakes—the threat is global. Previous political, geographical, and ideological boundaries melt in an instant. The threat is agnostic and universal. In a darkened movie theater, it’s strangely comforting to imagine a scenario where former factions must join forces to fight a common enemy. If you will indulge me, I’m going to begin this article with a similar disaster montage. Scene 1. Suburban Denver neighborhood. Newly built craftsman-inspired homes. Interior: Two men wrangle with a hot water heater in the basement, a woman is on the first floor, and an 11-year-old boy is in his room. No one knows that lurking below the neighborhood is an oil well and an unsealed flowline leading to a buildup of explosive gas. First there is a deafening boom, followed by an explosion that engulfs the house in flames. The two men are killed, the entire top floor collapses onto the woman, and the boy quickly jumps from a second floor window in an unthinkable gambit to save his young life. Nearby construction workers are able to pull the woman from the flames and rubble. Over the next week neighbors mourn their neighbors’ death, unaware that a second gas pocket has formed beneath the community.

current affairs

The article, a long one and in depth, takes on the oil industry noting their legislative successes, history, scale, fixes and concludes with the problem of abandoned oil wells which contribute to the Scene 1 that begins this piece and is true. As Louisiana, and the rest of the country, see the advent of renewables dropping in cost and increasing in use to the cost of oil this is a necessary education. As we see in Louisiana oil is both good and bad, economic benefit and social ill.

The Oil Industry: Abandoned Wells and Workers
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