Pitching In

The oil refineries are beginning the chemistry-set process of starting up again, but it is a slow process. Everything has to be checked out, the pipelines the valve, the tanks, the cracking towers.

It will take a while for distilled product to get back in the pipeline. There are shortages in the immediate area of the storm’s impact, and spot shortages that radiate out from them. There was no panic here, though our supply of fuels originates in the Gulf. I considered it only prudence. I filled up both vehicles with high-test over the weekend, a practice that my father drove into me when Detroit was burning years ago.

“Have enough to get away,” he said solemnly, and I knew then what he was referring to, either the mob coming up Woodward Avenue, or the mushroom cloud from downtown in the event of a Soviet strike. Even though neither came to pass, in all the years since, I have found his advice to be the prudent course of action. Always have an option.

The price of gas at the Fort was over three dollars a gallon, something my European friends find amusing, since that would be cheap across the pond. But they do not live like we do. We are hooked in the societal construct we have made, spewing our housing developments out across the hinterland with nothing to connect them to jobs or shopping but concrete and asphalt.

Heading out of town to Tysons Corner for a morning meeting, it is quite a display. Miles of SUVs parked on the inbound lanes, motors idling. I wonder where they work, what sort of trade permits them to saunter in so late?

The distribution chain for fuel is robust, because it has to be. But it depends on the tanker trucks to roll, and the depots be filled. There was a big tank farm out in the County where I used to live, and our golf course was laid out around it. It smelled, but it was bearable, and the occasional leak did not come our way.

The smell was that of the Gulf. One of the pipelines from there snaked across the country and past my subdivision, a narrow swath of cleared ground more than a thousand miles long, with a spur to the depot to keep us supplied. I didn’t think much about it, not until I had to learn about how pipelines worked.

We were planning the big left hook of the first Gulf War, the armored push that would race around Saddam’s forces in Kuwait and encircle them. There were questions from the operators on whether we could move enough oil to support it, and we brought in expects from industry to teach us how oil-derived product moves. We didn’t understand it, since our training had been on how to blow things in a general way.

But our trade was evolving along with our weapons.

The new bombs actually had a probability of going to a designated point in space, rather than a general area. Thus, we had to understand the systems we were attacking, since we could take out just the key parts. It was very efficient. But we then had to learn how uranium extraction facilities work, or an oil manifold is constructed, or how you could use one pipeline to ship two different types of petroleum product.

Elegant, these systems are. And so vulnerable. The President is surrounded by people who understand them. A lot of the senior people have spent time in the oil business.

It is interesting to think of your care as a throw-away item, good only for how much fuel is in the tank. The people fleeing Houston found out about that, running out of gas and facing the prospect of meeting the storm right there on the Freeway. Walk away, hitch a ride. Catch a bus.

With two day’s warning it was a nightmare. Even the President got it.

I feel a little sorry for Mr. Bush. Everyone I know who has actually met him came away with a positive impression of his energy and intelligence. A senior official I know says he was a tough audience to brief, with insightful questions and a no-nonsense attitude.

It is unfortunate that his fierce loyalty has attracted such a collection of mountebanks and scoundrels. I can only think of the Grant Administration for a comparison in rampant cronyism. Though I must say that the General had a great accomplishment to his credit before arriving at the Oval Office. He had the same sort of loyalty to his confidants, but they turned out to be incompetents and scalawags.

I have been wondering if there is a way to hitch my little red car to my truck, using the one as a sort of first-stage booster to get away from the capital and drive past the rioting at the service plazas on the turnpike. I might get all the way to the flat dirt of Ohio that way, though why I would want to go there eludes me. If I installed an extra tank on the bed of the pickup I might be able to make it all the way to the bluff above the Big Lake in Michigan , and hunker down there.

But I sigh and realize that a no-notice mass attack on the city would make it impossible to get outside the Beltway, and just keeping the cars filled up is about all a prudent man can do.

I am going to try to drive a little less, just like the President asked me yesterday. Actually, he asked all of us. What with the disruption in distribution, he is asking us all to pitch in and minimize unnecessary travel. He even directed all the Federal agencies to cut their energy use, and encourage their employees to use public transportation.

It sounds a little like Jimmy Carter, who I understand was a likeable enough fellow in person, though he was surrounded by mountebanks and scoundrels. But I tried to conserve energy then. I even tried to drive 55 miles an hour like Mr. Nixon requested, briefly, until the overtaking traffic threatened to roll right over me.

Mr. Nixon was a scoundrel, as it turned out, but he was not wrong about the energy situation. I often wonder how such a wasteful system was embraced, particularly when some gigantic rolling piece of steel passes by, the driver dwarfed by the enormity of the vehicle.

I guess we all have to pitch in. It is the right thing to do.

That will have to be tomorrow, though. I can’t take the Metro this morning, since I have to make a call at an Agency up in Northwest Washington before heading downtown and there is no mass transportation that goes that way, and there is no one to car-pool with.

But I think I will drop a note to the Administration about using mass transportation. I am not much of a bus man, though I imagine you can meet a lot of interesting people standing at the stops along the road.

And I am not going to start taking the train at rush hour. I may be a wasteful fool, but I will not be trapped on a burning train in a tunnel under the Potomac . I don’t mind pitching in and doing my bit. But let’s be reasonable.

Who the hell thought up this system, anyway? The Saudis?

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsoctra.com

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