Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“We didn't get to what we wanted,” Radley said. He had called off the drilling around
1,150 feet, 100 feet short of their goal. “We were drilling that gypsum, we think it was, and
it's just so slow. A foot an hour, or slower.” So they had stopped.
I wished Radley a happy Earth Day. “Is that what it is? Well, we got some earth right
here,” he said, pointing at the drilling rig.
The question was what kind of earth it was. Radley and his crew were waiting for a con-
tractor to log the well, lowering sensors to measure the properties of the soil and rock at
different depths, and determine whether it was likely to produce oil. (Logging his wells was
one of the few things Radley couldn't afford to do himself.) This was the critical moment,
on the basis of which Radley would decide whether to make the investment of lining the
well and outfitting it with a pump or to cut his losses and go drill his next well.
While the roughnecks horsed around and told jokes—it was the first time I had seen
them at ease—Radley and I leaned on the bed of his truck and waited for the logging to
start, and soon we had begun the political debate that I had known was coming ever since
we first met. In a matter of minutes Radley was pounding his fist on the truck and telling
me in a full shout that Obama was “not an American.” I won't even repeat the things he
said about people in Africa, and how they were responsible for the world's overpopulation.
I told him that where I came from, people went to hell for talking like that. He leaned on
the truck and let out a giant sigh.
With that out of the way, I asked him what was in store for the oil industry. Wouldn't
supplies dwindle someday? Would his grandchildren be able to spend their lives on an oil
field?
“Oil is actually a renewable resource,” he joked. “Just not in our time. There's still shit
down there rotting and decaying. It just hasn't turned into oil yet.” But even in the short
term, he wasn't worried about oil running out. “It may get scarce,” he said, “but it won't
run out. The technology isn't there to reach a lot of what's there, but it will improve. There
are big pockets of oil offshore that ecologists won't let us drill. I love ecologists. They keep
the price of oil up.”
But that brought us to the question of whether the remaining oil
should
be drilled. I
asked him what he thought of climate change.
He let out a deep breath. “I think what we're seeing is just the Earth's natural cycle,” he
said, and kicked the powdery soil by the truck. Human emissions might have some effect,
he allowed. “But not as much as people say. Al Gore, he's full of shit.
“Look,” he said, cutting to the chase. “If you drive an electric car, you still have to get
the electricity. What makes electricity? Oil. Coal. And who made the tires? Who made the
plastic? Who transported it to you? Everything in this world is affected by oil.”
