d8vanillaBy an edhat reader
I just received a call from Promark Research (that name showed on my phone). They are hired surveyors; please don’t abuse the caller if you actually answer the phone, which I rarely do. The caller/employee knows nothing; they’re just reading from a script.
Promark has been hired to do a survey regarding ExxonMobile’s plan to truck oil from platforms Hondo, Harmony, and Heritage to Santa Maria. This is necessary due to the shutdown of the Plains Pipeline and Las Flores Canyon facility. More information available here.
It is a long survey, given by a live person. I urge you to share your opinions, whatever they are. It will play a role in what happens next. I’m glad I did, it clarified my hypocrisies. I do greatly fear up to 70 trucks a day, given what happens to Ventura, SB and SLO counties, and may ripple through California, when there is a freeway shutdown. As a politically active person, I enjoyed participating. I also appreciated being forced to evaluate my own hypocrisies and fuzzy thinking.
Please try to participate; to give your opinion. It’s almost like voting. And please do that too!
Later this evening I’ll sit down with a nice single malt and be prepared for an amusing read. It saddens me greatly that, on issues of real importance, emotion so often gets in the way of clear, reasoned critical thinking. While it happens too often on both sides of the question, it seems to happen more often on the left-leaning side. Just anecdotal observation. Ah… those halcyon days when ‘Critical Thinking’ as well as ‘The Scientific Method’ were mandatory curricula for most of us.
Absolutely. Any claims that fracking is safe for the water table are pure nonsense, nothing but propaganda put out by the oilies.
Yes, let’s do like Norway and nationalize the oil industry, or tax it very heavily, and use the funds for something that benefits society, rather than letting the private oil companies rape and pillage our environment at will.
Venezuela nationalized their oil industry in 1976- the government seized oil company profits and used them to help the poor. In the 1990s Chavez fired and blackballed most of the PDVSA engineers because they did not agree with his politics. The result of both of these actions is that most of the PDVSA refineries and production platforms fell into disrepair. Now Venezuela can no longer afford to repair or maintain these facilities with the result that the country’s oil production has drastically dropped and is still decreasing. So nationalizing the Venezuela oil industry is one of the root causes of economic collapse in that country. Today inflation there is approaching one million percent per year.
Oil trucking, oil train transport, pipeline transport and the oil industry is fine. Careless drivers cause more damage to this community, than decades of the oil industry. Local environmentalists demanded A-A Pipeline get down with tooth brushes to scrub every single rock that had oil exposure after the recent pipeline break. Yet, not a word of protest from them regarding the remaining confetti litter we still have to put up with from the unpermited Fiesta egg sellers, who were allowed to leave their ocean-polluting detritus behind. Hypocrisy makes their principles a mockery.
Please remember the oil industry spent $6 million to defeat Prop. P. If it had passed, we wouldn’t have to worry about dangerous tankering and antiquated and unsafe extraction facilities. Now we have to worry about high intensity extraction which could contaminate future water supplies. These phone surveys are more ‘push polls’ than true surveys. Do you think if enough people said no on these surveys, the oil companies would stop spending their dirty money to convince some otherwise? Now it’s election season and the oil companies are behind this Measure H to redistrict according to the oil companies’ preferred methods. Vote no on H. Check voting records for incumbents and if they have taken oil money to pay for all their illegally posted signs, vote for the other person.
No reason to perpetuate debunked claims about “fracking”.
Everyone loves to use Norway as an example of “enlightened Scandinavian socialism”, while totally ignoring Norway is funding their social welfare programs totally on North Sea oil extraction revenues. Just think what Santa Barbara County could be like if it charted a similar path.
I got this call as well, and it is a very long survey. It asks questions on both sides and wants to know whether damage to the environment and dangers of trucking shift one’s opinion, or whether claims of adding jobs or lessening the importation of oil make one more or less favorable to allowing restarting oil extraction, than one was earlier in the survey.
They do claim that this oil is “sweeter” (less H2S gas) than other sources, which I think is untrue. And they indirectly want to know whether one thinks fracking is better. I think these are false choices, since I think it would be better to leave the oil in the ground and make those new jobs producing sustainable and not-greenhouse sources of energy.
Creating jobs is a good one, doesn’t mean much for locals as they often bring in workers from their other oil producing areas. Of course, an accident/oil spill can generate local jobs. Fracking is plain bad for the environment and, in Oklahoma is causing earthquakes wrecking havoc. Just what we need on our faults. Trucking this stuff going to help us stop “importing oil”? It is a tiny drop in the bucket of what we use. ALL the oil taken out of the channel since oil drilling there started would run our country for ONE day. Not worth the price of environmental damage.
Venezuela was doing well until the US imposed sanctions on their economy which are illegal under international law. These sanctions are hand in glove with US and Columbia (the US surrogate in the area) supported coup attempts. All of this is to deter countries which want natural resources to be used for the people of the nation, not to enrich the most wealthy and to help mid-eastern “royals” to mess over women and non-Muslims.
Too bad, because every word he said is wrong.