The Gas Must Flow

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

"The Gasoline Must Flow" ::

Reflections on Modern Gas Guzzling :

a brief summation of some observations

by: Jon Gee

Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Introduction: Why Are Gas Prices Different Now Than Yesterday?

""wondering why gas prices are lower right now?

[my friend, Mike Williams] can offer two possible reasons:

1) the whole budget for 2014 in Russia is based on oil prices around $90 per barrel, reducing the price to below $80 per barrel will have a big negative impact on the Russian economy

2) mid-term 'elections' fast approaching in November""

at this point, it's pretty easily arguable "petro-dollars" are a "controlled substance" on the international market (in other words, they are such a staple-commodity they are subsidized above and beyond the free-market laws of supply and demand) and that if prices to end-line consumers go either up or down, it is due to the choice of the CEOs of the companies providing the product, and not due to any surplus or shortage of the product itself. For example, any international event can be used as a political justification for increasing or decreasing the price of gas without it incurring the gas corporations (or their CEOs' salaries) any reduction in profits at all either way. If you measure "petro-dollars" in gold, their value is almost as stable, and both are over-inflated when measured in decreasingly valuable USD federal reserve notes.

The content of gasoline per gallon is listed on gas pumps as "containing up to 10% ethanol" (corn-oil). This doesn't mean much in terms of being an exact science, considering corn-oil is a thinner, less viscous liquid; therefore it not only rises to the surface (and therefore pumps out earlier) of underground gas tanks, it also evaporates faster in the internal-combustion engines of individual vehicles (making them run out of "gas" faster, and making their gas-gauges APPEAR to hold MORE gallons than their actual tanks DO hold). Because of these reasons, it is possible a certain gallon of pumped gas might contain more than 10% ethanol, but it is not likely it would ever contain less. Ethanol is then priced higher in this combination than its same content in pure gasoline. If 90% of one gallon of gas is worth X amount, and the process of watering it down by "10%" with ethanol costs Y, and if X + Y = Z, where Z is the price per gallon of product delivered to the end-line consumers "at the pump," then technically if this price were $1.00, then 1/10th of 1 gallon of ethanol would be worth 10 cents. Right now, "at the pump," we're paying ~30 cents for 1/10th of a gallon of corn-oil per every 9/10ths of 1 gallon of "gas." If this is a "good" thing because our cars can run on ONLY corn-oil, and it is environmentally cleaner and / or cheaper, why not replace using gasoline entirely with using corn-oil instead? If this is not a "good" thing, then why do we bother to do it at all? Gas companies used converting to a "10% per gallon ethanol" processing standard to increase the price of their product to end-line consumers, but their conversion to this process has been made back by profits selling less of their product for increased prices with this cheaper cost, "watering down" method.

Gas is a rare commodity in a variety of ways. Obviously, it is a "fossil fuel," and this means its global supplies occurring naturally are limited. It is, however, also nearly unique historically as a product that acts as a lynch-pin upon which ALL other technologies are dependent. Without gasoline, car companies would be forced to convert to manufacturing a more efficient model of engine that would not depend on a rarefied earth element for fuel, true; but without gasoline, they would also not be ABLE to make this transition. If all gasoline production and distribution were to in one day come to a complete halt, the result would terrify even John Galt. If there were a "run" on banks, it would be one thing. People would expect their funds to be able to be withdrawn, and they would not be able to be, so the people would get angry and protest, or else get hungry and go away; "sorry, the bank stole from you, you should have known better, have a nice day." But if there were a "run" on gasoline, being an industrial product that is so much a staple of everyday use, if people could not GET gas for their cars, they could not go to work, and this would cause the general economy at large to cease functioning. Only in the sci-fi novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert is an economy so completely dependent on one single commodity. And, as they say of their "spice" fuel for "bending space" in "Dune," so it is now in "western civilization" that "the gas must flow." Gasoline is, now, not unlike the wheel in early agrarian civilization, or bread during the French Revolution. As such, gas is, technically, worth MORE than money; not only our own currency, presently depriciating in value, but ANY form of token-exchange commodity. Gas is more precious than gold; and, again, only "Mad Max," from the realm of science-fiction, has seemed to have its finger on this very strong, very vivid pulse.

Main Body: Who Owns and Controls the Global Supply of Gas?

So, who controls the gas controls the price. But who controls the gas in reality? It is controlled, in reverse order from the end-line consumer "at the pump," firstly by the gas station attendant's employers, the corporation who owns the property the gas pumps are located on; they contract with a distribution company to ship gas from a production location to their individual stations, where it is then fed from tanker-trucks into underground tanks beneath the pumps where end-line consumers then purchase it, priced per gallon. The distribution company that owns and pays licensed union operators to drive the tanker trucks from the production plant to the stations controls the gas only from point A to point B, and is not "owner" of the gas unless there is an industrial automobile accident along the way. Often times, the distribution company is owned by the same corporation that owns the manufacturing plant, but this is not always the case. Gasoline ceases being under the control of and "owned" by the manufacturing plant as soon as it leaves their property on tanker trucks. Prior to this time the final product of gasoline is being "refined" at the chemical processing plant, which is similar to the process of "homogenizing" milk: the product received by the chemical processing plant from international distribution is "watered down" in a variety of ways (adding ethanol occurs at this phase, for example) and thus "refined" from "crude" oil into "gasoline." The price of a barrel of crude oil and the price of the same amount of gasoline differ only due to the work done at these chemical processing plants. They are the industrial factories that "manufacture" the end-line product as it is purchased by consumers. In short, if anyone is pissing in your gas tank and it isn't your neighbor or the attendant at the gas station, it would only be the unionized tanker truck driver or a worker at such a chemical factory, because before this the product ceases to be "your gas," because it is not even technically "gas." Prior to arriving by the barrel at chemical plants for "refinement," crude oil is transported on massive pallets in huge freight ships and, less often, in large vats inside the holds of "tanker ships," as well as being flown on planes and driven by freight-shipping or tanker trucks. Almost all the methods for delivering these massive shipments of crude oil are owned by the same, international corporation that owns the chemical processing plants, the gas station properties themselves and that usually owns the tanker trucks used to ship the gasoline to the stations. These are the so-called "gas company" mega-corporations that own the majority of the world's wealth in terms of controlling the manufacture and distribution of its most pivotal, key product. Prior to the international distribution of crude oil the oil has to be put onto these distribution vehicles and brought into "western civilization" from its prior place of residence, since it is considered "impolite" in western civilization to "drill back home" and since, especially lately with "fracking" (water-mining), their score for successfully doing so without causing an ecological catastrophe is extremely low. Oil enters "western civilization" from literally everywhere else in the world. We, that is, citizens in "western civilization" are subsidizing huntas in Africa, guerillas in S. America, terrorists across Eurasia, not to mention the deadly House of the late King Fhad in Saudi Arabia, all due to our oddly unspoken, even unspeakable, "addiction to oil." I say this because not all the actual oil-fields where oil drills and pumps extract oil from below the soil are owned by these oil and gas companies themselves, but, because this same, small group of "big oil" corporations owns all the international distribution companies, almost ALL oil-fields in the world must contract with and be on "friendly" terms in business relations with these "big oil" companies. Therefore what BP, or Shell, or Exxon, says "must" be done to extract oil from an oil field, usually does end up getting done, with the help of local political officials and local militaries, and even if against the popularly expressed will of the indigenous peoples. Not ALL oil-fields are therefore directly "owned" by "big oil" companies, but ALL oil-fields ARE directly "controlled" by them.

But even before all this, when the gas is still in the ground, then who controls it? The remaining oil reserves are predominately in the Middle East, so far as the modern "gas companies" seem to be aware of the presence of any of these so-called "oil reserves" being found ANYWHERE around the entire world at all. So, via political lobbying and so-called "PACs" (political action committees), the "big gas" companies coerce politicians to persuade the president to use the military to represent their own "American business interests" abroad; this is why there are wars involving US troops being sent in to "some country or another" to invade there and to "secure their resources" for our own use; hence why it has long been said "Eurasia has always been at war with East-Asia." If there were no diamonds in S. Africa, there would be no reason for Europeans to have occupied the lands there; if there were no canal built in Panama, there would be no need for US military bases to be stationed there; if there were no "oil reserve" fields of untapped "black gold" in Palestine, or Iran, there would not need to be a representation interjected into the region of a "model democracy" in the form of Israel. There is more raw methane in Siberia, mere inches under the tundra's permafrost there, that could be used raw just as easily as is processed petrol, but still, crude oil is extracted from primarily desert climates, and the people from colder climates traditionally hate more tropical climate dwellers; oil is only a modern excuse for this ancient, ugly racism. So, supposedly, the US DOD should be thought of as being "in control" of and "owner" of ALL the "oil companies" themselves, and there have been covertly signed documents supporting the public record of "Executive Orders" acknowledging as much as this fact as well. The President cannot deny any more than can the CEOs of gas companies that, "whoever has the gun decides everything," and the US DOD is holding ALL the guns. This philosophy is NOT shared, however, outside the ivory towered hallways of "western civilization," despite the constant activity of "terrorist cells" promoting this message in foreign lands. Everyone other than the US DOD themselves want peace. The US DOD, however, have been wooed into promoting "neo-con" fascism by the lure of their promising them "constant conflict" and "endless war." Only the arm-chair bullet-heads at the Pentagon would see a "no win situation" as an opportunity for showing off their newest toys. The US DOD, of course, "own" and "control" the entire global gas industry only because they solely alone do not necessarily depend on gasoline for all transportation purposes. They know they have a "back-up" in "black-budget" R&D technologies developed in "black-sites" by "skunk works" and other private sector, contracted corporations. So they alone do not care what the fate of gas is; neither gasoline's immediate fate, nor its long-term fate, which is that gas will eventually all run out one day, directly effects the US DOD. They have hedged their bets with "alien technologies."

But this only means the US DOD "owns" and "controls" the oil COMPANIES, themselves comprising the infrastructure for the industry of extraction, transportation, processing, distribution and sale of oil; NOT the oil itself. When the oil is inside your car's gas-tank, who owns it then? Do you own it, or does the US military? Is it the rightful property of simply ANYONE with a gun who would take it from you? And when the oil is still underground, before it has been syphoned up by drilling platforms and harnessed by a system of pumps, to whom does it belong then? To the human beings walking the surface of the lands above it? It can be argued it "belongs" to them only as de facto moral law, but it cannot be proven to "belong" to them when this law is put to the test of "trial by fire," and a gun is introduced into the equation. Likewise, it can be argued, even more eloquently, that natural "resources" do not belong to any one species that walks the surface nor swims the seas nor flies the air of this earth, our planet, but only to the whole planet itself: the elements of the ground belong TO the ground, they belong IN the ground, and they should be left alone there rather than being harnessed and destroyed (or worse, converted to pollution) to feed mankind's myopically-minded technological "progress." As long as there are multiple answers to each of these questions and thus debate on the issue of the use of gasoline can continue, then the use of gasoline WILL continue. As long as not everyone thinks it's a "bad" idea, it will continue to be allowed to happen. It is the same way with the false romance of war.

According to international laws, trade-agreements, tariffs and taxation treaties, etc. a set of rules governs the extraction, sale and distribution of crude oil. But in reality, these laws do not apply. If they applied, BP could not have bought off with "hush-money" their destruction by oil-rig leak of the Gulf of Mexico; nor could Exxon still be in business following the sinking of their ship the Valdez off shore from the state of Alaska. When a "big oil" company breaks a law, it is forgiven; international oversight committees are never assembled, national oversight committees are bribed and paid off to keep silent. Such is the strength of "petro-dollars."  Although the oil-reserves themselves are supposedly, according to these international laws, the property of the nations that surround them with borders, protect them with armies and with international bribery, and of the people who live in these nations, administrated on their behalf either by elected representatives who may remain alive only by remaining "friendly" business partners to "big oil," or else by the nation's own private companies, who likewise must answer first to "big oil," thus, obviously, it is the "big oil" companies of "western civilization" that own these oil reserves in reality, and the US DOD that, in turn, "owns" and "controls" these "big oil" companies. If the "big oil" companies wished to extort the oil in the reserves owned by a nation from it, they would only need to resort to offering a sub-standard price for it coupled with the threat of international military force for it to remain, it would seem, an acceptable transaction in the eyes of international law and the (ever transparent) so-called "world court." Under older laws, now apparently antiquated and of a bygone era, such could have been called a "criminal conspiracy," and the CEOs of the "big gas" companies tried for "price fixing" as well as for "extortion" and even, in many cases, actual violent crimes including "murder," even, in some cases, on a "mass" scale. The skeletons hiding in the closets of "big oil" CEOs are much more grim than the public at large may even yet imagine, considering the majority of news media in "western civilization" is owned by industrial-based corporations that are intimately partnered with "big oil" companies. But the events at Three Mile Island, and possibly even at Chernobyl, pale in comparison to the ongoing disaster at Fukushima; and it seems that for every one nuclear reactor that fails, ten oil-related disasters have to occur to keep up and fill the "eco-terrorism" gap between these competing energy-industries. The "secret war" being fought against all mankind alike, waged against us by our own machines, is called "blood for oil," and, although its "war crimes" remain unspoken, an unnamed specter, lurking the dimmed hallways of the modern mind, the "blood money" tendered from this conflict by the CEOs of "big oil" companies as "war profiteers" in it remains "on the books."

Conclusion: Why Does Gas Matter?

Why does gas matter? Why do we need it? Why is there a multi-billion dollar per year industry in place overseeing its extraction and virtually enforcing its use? This is, honestly, a relevant and respectable question, yet to ask it would surely be to incur scoffs and scorn. To ask, "why do we need gas" is, to the modern mind, almost no different than to ask an infant why does it need air while choking it to death. We can never get enough gas. It is like we have tasted a forbidden fruit that now obsesses us so much we cannot live without it, and would be more willing to commit suicide than face life without it. Yet it is also destroying us. This industry pollutes more than all others combined, and its pollution is more damaging than most. From occasional oil-spills on a large scale, adversely impacting ecosystems indefinitely, to the pollution of carbon-monoxide that makes EVERY driver partially guilty for destroying the atmosphere, the gas industry has increased the pace of humanity's daily activities, but only at the cost of our biosphere's sustainability. Although tragic, this fact remains undeniable as well. The best we can do is accept this and learn to live with it by factoring it into our own identity as best we are able, but we cannot change it. We KNOW we have passed "peak oil." It will be said this occurred during our own life-times. But whether it occurred before during or after our life-times would not matter; there is nothing more we can do now to prevent the coming down-fall of the "petro-dollar" based technological industries than had we never even been born. But we should waste no time in mourning their loss; we should instead invest all our energies in finding an alternative mode of transportation that is powered in another way besides automobiles that run on gas. Once we have done so, we will not miss our, yet present, addiction to gas and oil. Then we will all be able to honestly ask "what does gas matter" without it being taken as a joke.

Peace. - Jon