A friend of mine is in the valve business. The more I think of it, the more I have come to believe that he must be in absolutely the best business around. This conclusion is based on the fact that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, the energy business, in the minds of many, boils down to the status of “the valves.”
No one knows where these “valves” are, but they ought to be under heavy guard, because they apparently control the world’s access to energy. When there is a shortage, the talking heads on the evening news blame the industry for not “opening the valves.” When prices fall, they insinuate that the industry is keeping “the valves closed” to drive prices up.
Apparently, those of us who have devoted our lives and careers to the oil and gas industry have missed the fact that somewhere there are valves whose operation can instantly solve the cyclicity that has plagued our business for more than a century.
Comedian Jay Leno, in a popular bit titled “Jay-walking,” used to do ad hoc interviews in public places asking simple questions to see what passersby thought about certain subjects. I always wished he had asked the public about “the valves” to see what the average person would say. Without Leno’s valuable research, I can only speculate, but I’d bet a bundle that the average citizen believes that there actually are valves somewhere, tended by a tough-looking guy in grease-stained coveralls and a hard hat, that can be actuated on the whim of an oil executive, who, like a chameleon, can change form at will. Sometimes the valve czar wears a US $5,000 suit and smokes a big cigar. Other times he wears the flowing robes of a sheikh. Interestingly, the mythical valve guy never resembles a politician, regulator, or bureaucrat.
The notion that oil and gas companies, whose only source of cash is production, are closing the “valves” until prices rise is like an anorexic going on a hunger strike. Similarly, the idea that when shortages occur, someone can open “the valves” to an inexhaustible source of energy to instantly cure the problem is ludicrous.
Nowhere in the world is there another industry where the cost/reward gap is as high or as long as it is in the oil and gas industry. Only the oil and gas business demands investment of billions of dollars before the first drop of oil hits the sales line. Production is king, because production is the cash register from whence profits ultimately derive. But the burden of pre-production investment is staggering. If there were “valves,” there would be a queue of willing hands to operate them.
Less than a year ago, the public was screaming about gasoline prices. “Drill here – drill now!” was the slogan du jour. Though the industry sadly shook its collective head in the knowledge that even if every single active drilling rig spudded a new well the next day, it would take years before the resulting production ramped up enough to affect supplies, the conventional wisdom believed the problem could be solved instantly – like opening “the valves.” No worries. For all its bluster, the current administration has obfuscated and delayed action, even rescinded previously approved permits, that could have alleviated the situation.
A popular comic strip that ran from 1948 to 1975 featured the wisdom of Pogo, an erudite opossum from Georgia. At the height of his career, Pogo wisely observed, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
“Valves” there may be. But make no mistake, the hand on those valves is not in the towers of Houston or the tents of Arabia. The hand is in Washington.
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