WHAT PRICE OIL ?
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Oil is becoming pricier and pricier, and in economies like ours its rocket-like trajectory affects everything from the stock market to the onion and sugar prices. Whatever the economists might say with their 'deeper' understanding, to the Tom, Dick or Harry...oops! I ought to remember that this is not the India of the British Raj days!... to the Shankaran, Gopanlan and Madhavan in the street, with no degrees or qualification in Economics, the fuel price increases simply, but surely upset the family budget. And as many of us understand family budgets, they are a far cry from the National or the State budgets--they CANNOT work with a budget deficit...NEVER! So the simple math is, if something goes up, something else has to come down to accommodate it. The result, inevitable 'budget cuts' that leave the wife and kids and the maid servant irritable and counter-productive.
For most of us the shooting oil prices are rated according to the additional burden that we face in our family budgets. But have we ever thought of the TCO factor?
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THINK TCO... ALWAYS
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Today management experts and even computer printer salesmen have a way of evangelizing about TCO--Total Cost of Ownership.
If you buy a small puppy for say, 100 rupees and think that you got lucky. Just wait a moment, or maybe, a month or two. Soon the pup tells you with a growl that it is no longer a pup, and it eats well into your wallet. The vet's bills, the other cost of ownership hassles like replacing your neighbour's doormat that your pet chewed through, to buying the postman a new pair trousers for the one that the enterprising canine bit through, not to speak of the irreplaceable piece of skin and flesh on his bottom that got accidentally in between the sharp teeth of the good doggie..etc etc, will soon 'swell' your 100 precious rupees to well over a thousand in no time and to more than 10,000 in a matter of months.
All that does not include the 'cost' of peace of mind!
This, then, is what is meant by TCO. I think you got it.
That tells us, we cannot rate the cost of fuel by mere rupees alone that you part with at the fuel pump every other day. Of course, the price you pay at the pump is not the 'real' price of the thing we all know. It is inflated like a balloon by the greed of governments and corporates, and often we see 'studies' that the stuff you get for about Rs 50 is what actually ought to cost only around Rs 18 or 20 at the most. Recently they made it BS-III compliant; another 50 paise more, but then you are up to international par!! Ho, ho, ho..but my friendly neighbourhood pump serves up the kersene-laced, 950 ml concoction that my engine is accustomed to, BS-II or III...
Forgetting all these little facts of life for a moment, let us take a long, cool look at the oil scenario.
Which are the largest ships in the world? Oil tankers!
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| A huge oil tanker at sea |
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2008-10/28/content_7150135.htm
Also, ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker )
And when an oil tanker runs into problems, today their huge capacities put the entire world and its eco-system into peril. A famous yesteryear event is the Exxon Valdez tragedy in the pristine polar waters of Alaska. The January, 1990, issue of the prestigious National Geographic magazine had a detailed article about the tragedy and its aftermath.
( http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1990/01/alaska-oil-spill/hodgson-text )
The National Geographic Society is one of the few US institutions that still maintain a laudable level of concern for the world and its geographical treasures and its eco-system. Its magazine is a voice of sanity in this world of corporate-funded 'experts' who spout all sorts of 'convenient' proclamations. Through its pages we share the knowledge, expertise and concerns of internationally recognized men and women of eminence, and who, we can easily see, have " no axes to grind"!!
I would ask you to read the above link to the Exxon tragedy first and then move on to the most recent such tragedy--the 'Deepwater Horizon' oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico near the US coast.
( http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/10/gulf-oil-spill/bourne-text )
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| 'Deepwater Horizon' explosion |
It makes chilling reading. The greed and expediency of the huge oil corporates is revealed for us all to see. And the more shocking thing is how they are able to influence the government too--the government that is supposed to be the 'guardian' of us all, the guardian of our safety, security and good health, and our right to a good, clean environment. We pay through our noses all sorts of taxes to the government for doing that. All I wish to say here is, read yourself and decide for yourself whether you want to be merely shocked, dismayed, or downright indignant or be chilled to the marrow...these are some of the options you might have, just that and nothing else.
Do you remember that little incident near the Mumbai coast a few months back when two small boats ( I humbly reserve the word 'tanker' for those behemoths of the ocean that carry million of barrels of crude oil), one carrying some oil, collided and spewed a few hundreds of barrels of oil into the sea?
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| Mumbai- oil on troubled waters |
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mumbai-ship-collision-captain-blames-captain-43592
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article562730.ece )
Ah, our media dont have the time to highlight or examine such things; they are more comfortable examining Sania's romantic preferences or what some nut thinks about Ayodhya ('...where was that, and say, what is all the brouhaha about??...' LOL...) We all know that oil and water do not mix well and crude oil in the water is not the best of healthy additives for marine life, or for that matter, life anywhere.
Till date the ' Deepwater Horizon' well has spewed approximately 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. If you want to think that nature will take care of all that, and perhaps more, easily, well I have nothing to say. The massive amounts of oil and chemical dispersants etc ARE causing long-lasting environmental damage from which recovery is a slow, painful process, according to the scientists. Listen to what oceanographer Ian MacDonald at Florida State University says: "There is a tremendous amount of highly toxic material in the water column, both at the surface and below, moving around in one of the most productive ocean basins in the world." To me that sounds serious, and it cannot be good.
When decisions are taken in the air-conditioned boardrooms of megacorps, insulated from all reality, where only the bottom line of profit and expediency are serious considerations, such tragedies are the only aftermath.
Not only now, but in the future too.
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THERE..... and HERE ?
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Here I wish to throw up a humble question for your consideration, dear reader.
After the Exxon tagedy, the oil company and the government had pumped in billions of dollars into a cleanup drive, and as the Nat Geo article notes, Nature was now limping back to normalcy after nearly a quarter of a century. Today, no doubt, many more billions will be pumped in to clean up and make good the damage done to the environment. Where the money comes from is another question. Surely the oil companies will spend a small part of their profits, but it is mostly the taxpayer's money, spent by a goverment eager to protect its citizens. Just take a moment to read this quote from the NatGeo article.
"......In 1990, after the Exxon Valdez spill, Congress's Office of Technology Assessment analyzed spill-response technologies and found them lacking. "Even the best national response system will have inherent practical limitations that will hinder spill-response efforts for catastrophic events—sometimes to a major extent," wrote OTA's director, John H. Gibbons. "For that reason it is important to pay at least equal attention to preventive measures as to response systems … The proverbial ounce of prevention is worth many, many pounds of cure."
The US government is at pains to do its best probably to contain the tragedy. Why? Because it is right at their doorstep. Will Obama the great humanitarian pump in so much money had the incident happened in international waters? Suppose we poor Indians were in the wake of the Gulfstream ocean current and all the pollution landed up at our beaches and upset our lives and our economy? Will their response be on a similar level. We have not forgotten what happened in Bhopal. As far as I know, Union Carbide and Dow Corning are American corporates.
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| Remembering Bhopal..... |
I shall leave the conclusions to you individual readers. I realize I dont have to do the thinking for you people.
But I want you to think, and think clearly....what price oil??
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OIL 'BLOOD MONEY'
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This then is the price that you pay ultimately for oil and our addiction to oil. It is NOT an addiction that we have picked up. It is an addiction that we are forced to stay with as a result of the long-term investment that have been made by oil companies the world over, and by the people who create a never-ending need for oil--the car makers. It is a 'cartel' that is holding the entire world to ransom.
It is time we listened to the sane words of a concerned scientist like the University of Georgia biogeochemist Mandy Joye, who has spent years studying the deep waters of the Mexican Gulf:
"The Deepwater Horizon incident is a direct consequence of our global addiction to oil. Incidents like this are inevitable as we drill in deeper and deeper waters. We're playing a very dangerous game here.
If this isn't a call to green power, I don't know what is."
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GREEN POWER
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Green is the colour of our future power. Or at least, it ought to be, if we are to preserve our eco-systems. So let us think of setting ourselves free from this debilitating addiction to oil. Americans burn nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day. Nobody has figured out how much we Indians burns. (Or, has somebody? Please give me the figures please.) It must surely be an unaffordably huge quantity.
In a country like India with so much of hydro, wind and solar power generation potential, why is the government silent about encouraging the green alternatives? As everywhere, policies are defined by clever corporates who have the politicians at the end of a few strings.
And believe me, though puppetry is not an optional subject offered at the B-schools, most of them are master puppeteers!
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more to follow
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