It's Crude After All

I am spending the weekend in Oklahoma. I have an aunt who has had a stroke and is probably not long for this world and I wanted to say goodbye before the opportunity passed me by. After all, as you get older, the things that really matter are much different than those you chased as a teen or twenty year old. Ah, youth. As my drill sergeants at Fort Sill used to say, "To be young and dumb and full of ... " We will leave off the last of that for family reasons.

What I have found in traveling almost half way across the United States is that our country has a considerable wealth of petroleum. There are oil pumps running round the clock to put that most precious of resources in the hands of refineries to produce gasoline. When I was out here 20 years ago, most of the pumps were not running. What that tells me is that $120 per barrel oil is much more appealing to the producers than $30 per barrel oil. The owners of the mineral rights are making sure they get their fair share instead of giving it all to the foreign producers.

I wrote an entry last year that gave the statistic that 50% of America's petroleum requirements were provided domestically. That means that half of the wealth generated by the meteoric rise in gas prices is kept right here at home. We are so willing to point the finger at how rich the Saudis are getting that we forget that we ourselves are providing a path to wealth to the owners of these oil wells. In the area of Oklahoma I am in, the Indians own the mineral rights to everything below top soil level. Maybe this is pay back for how our forefathers mistreated them. It could also be serendipity.

Icool

Cobb