Desperate to control rising oil prices, the House passes restrictive trading measures.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aKAOLTd34y4o&refer=energy

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Estimated oil reserves in the ground never actually equate to barrels per day.  If successful, by the Saudi’s own account, this field development will result in an extra 1.2 million barrels of oil per day by next June.

This addition to the world’s daily production will have little or no impact on the price of a barrel of oil because it’s not enough to offset increasing demand, or declining rates.  It is frightening that no other country on earth has the ability to increase the world’s daily production even by half this much.

Giant Saudi field is key to boosting oil output: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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Dirty rice is a Cajun specialty.  Here is an authentic recipe for Dirty Rice Dressing from the French Acadian Cookbook published by the Louisiana Acadian Handicraft Museum, Inc. in 1955.  The recipe was contributed by Dr. W.E. Hunt of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

1 cup rice                                             1 clove chopped garlic

1 pound ground meat                            Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

1 pound ground giblets                          Pinch of thyme and sweet basil

   (from fowl or separate giblets)

1 cup chopped onion                            1 bunch green onions and tops chopped

½ cup chopped bell pepper                  1 tablespoon minced parsley

½ cup chopped celery

Cook rice in double boiler until fluffy, using enough salted water to 1 inch above rice.  Allow to cook unstirred until all water is gone.  In one skillet sauté ground meat and giblets in ¼ pound butter until brown; in another skillet sauté onions, pepper, celery and seasoning in ¼ pound butter.  Add other ingredients.  In large pan mix all above ingredients well, using natural gravy from fowl to moisten.

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Marilyn’s wind chimes are performing a chaotic symphony tonight because of an approaching storm.  Their resonance reminds me of an incident that happened in Vietnam, but not because of the weather.  I had the same eerie feeling - a warning from somewhere deep in the primitive portion of our brains that scientists never discuss, our animal brain that screams at us whenever something very bad is about to happen.

The mind plays tricks, even the animal part of our brains.  This is particularly true when your senses are robbed.  Such is the case after darkness falls in triple-canopy jungle.  I was a grunt in an infantry line company.  We were somewhere near the Cambodian border.  Hell! We were probably in Cambodia.

The area was hot (firefight hot) and our sister companies had all made contact with the NVA during the past days.  Earlier that night we had watched and heard a B-52 attack as the big planes carpet bombed a nearby patch of jungle, hoping to disrupt Charlie’s intricate system of trails that somehow managed to keep supplying arms and supplies to their soldiers in the south.

I sat in a damp hole in the ground, my senses disrupted and seeing nothing, not even an occasional flash of light.  It’s true that when you have no vision your hearing becomes more acute.  I was aware of the sounds of night.  A tiger stalked in the distance and I could track its progress through the jungle by the low growls it periodically emitted.  I could also hear elephants and horses – yes, horses.  Don’t ask me how or why they were there in the jungle but their sound is unmistakable.  I also heard other things.

We were supplied by helicopters every three days.  After cutting a landing zone in the jungle – a small LZ barely large enough for the choppers rotors – the birds would bring us food, water and fresh ammo.  They also brought us beer and pop and each of us got three beverages of our choice every three days.

You didn’t want to drink your beer immediately because everyone would beg a sip and there would be little or nothing left for you to drink when the can came back around.  Most soldiers savored theirs while pulling guard duty because it was about the only time you were ever truly alone while on patrol.  As I sat there, listening to the tiger, elephants and horses, I heard someone pop the top on a Black Label.  Then I heard something else – the low moan of a soldier, thinking of his wife or girl as he masturbated in the darkness.  I knew very well how he felt because I was thinking about doing the same thing myself.

Tension mounted as days went by without encountering Charlie.  As we cut our way slowly, single file through the jungle, a signal began being passed back to the rear.  The soldier in front of me pointed at a snake in the branches over our head.  I have no idea what it really was but we called it a three-step snake because that’s about how far you could go before dying if it bit you.  Not far from the snake I witnessed something as eerie as I have ever seen before, or since.

It was a thousand pound bomb lying flat on the ground amid broken jungle vegetation.  It was a relic of a B-52 attack, a monster bomb that had not detonated but still had the stark power to blow a forty-foot hole in the ground.  Everyone in the row of soldiers realized as much and to say that I was frightened would be lessening the aching fear throbbing in the pit of my gut.  The bomb was longer than I am tall and even lying flat it came up to my chest.  We snaked around it, no one touching it for fear that it was booby trapped by the NVA.

Fifteen days passed without encountering the enemy and I still remember climbing the incline to the firebase hewn out of a Vietnamese mountain.  We were stopped at the perimeter and told the bad news that instead of our expected five day stand-down, we would be re-supplied where we stood and then sent back into the jungle for another fifteen day stint.

One of the men – a southern black man - heard his animal brain louder than the rest of us.  Pulling off his pack, he sat down and refused to move.  I remember our idiot Lieutenant holding a .45 to the man’s forehead and threatening to blow his brains out if he didn’t get up from where he sat.  The lieutenant’s threats fell on deaf ears and soon the military police from the firebase led him away at gunpoint to an inevitable stay in the Long Binh Jail.  As we watched them leave, all the rest of us wondered if he wasn’t the smart one in the bunch and perhaps doing the right thing.

We stayed on the perimeter of the firebase that night, not allowed to even sleep on the safer side of the razor wire.  Next morning we reentered the jungle for another fifteen days.  At this point, my mind numbs and my memories become blocked from the events that ensued.

Tonight, as wind whistles out my back door, distant thunder rattles the windows and lightning illuminates the western sky like a fiery B-52 attack, I get that same eerie feeling that I had so many years ago.  This time, even with the impending danger of a possible tornado, the sound is accompanied by hope of a better tomorrow, and not the creeping depression that plagued me for so many years.

http://www.ericwilder.com

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Yesterday’s comment about $150 oil has instant effect on the market.

Oil reaches $142 on view dollar will keep falling: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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Here is a pic currently circulating by email between oily types.  It is supposedly a real picture of a Sandridge Energy drilling rig sitting directly in front of an approaching tornado.  I PhotoShopped the pic a little just for kicks.

http://www.EricWilder.com

Natural gas may exceed $15 MCF sometime in July, one analyst predicts.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=anmIUiUi2fhA&refer=energy

http://www.EricWilder.com

Just when you thought -

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080626/oil_prices.html

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I was surveying some shallow gas wells near Billings, Oklahoma yesterday when I recalled the first well I ever got drilled in Noble County.  I briefly recounted the story to the three people in the vehicle with me but I omitted telling them about the pathos I felt at the time.

It was near the lowest financial ebb for Anne and I following the eighties oil bust.  We had a very large glass piggy bank that we had filled with coins over the years and we had agreed to wait until our most desperate moment before opening it and spending the coins.  The time finally arrived.

We were expecting thousands but there was only about two-hundred-sixty dollars in the glass pig.  The money tided us over for the moment but we got down to our last dollar on more than one occasion.  Somehow, every time our money became dangerously low I would somehow manage to sell a prospect or make a few bucks doing a little consulting job.

There were few real jobs available in the State at the time and there was a joke going around about a geologist that applied for a job flipping burgers at MacDonald’s only to be told, “Sorry, but all the geologists that work for us have Master’s Degrees.”  The story wasn’t far from the truth.

Before the “Bust” I had an ego as large as Texas.  Geologists must have a second sense to find oil many miles below the earth’s surface and the best are dubbed oil finders.  I knew that I was good and I also knew that I was also incredibly lucky.  One of the founders of Texas Oil & Gas once told me, “Eric, you have a gift.  You’re an oil finder.  There aren’t many around like you and if you can find oil and gas the world will beat a path to your door.”

It didn’t seem like anyone was searching very hard for me in 1989 as I remember going a year without selling a prospect.  Somehow Anne and I managed to eke out a living but my pocketbook and my ego had taken a huge pummeling.  I had lost my mojo and everything I touched seemed to turn to turkey poop.

My dreams, along with my ego, were severely bruised but not completely destroyed.  I continued working and had the idea for a drilling prospect in Noble County, a county I had never previously worked.  Unable to afford professional drafting I drew the map on a sheet of typing paper and colored it with a used set of thrift store colored pencils.  It took me a while to find someone that even wanted to look at it.

One weekend I read an ad in the Sunday Oklahoman classifieds.  It was posted by someone with a Dallas area code and they were looking for a geologic prospect.  I called the number before finishing my first cup of morning coffee.

Two days later a man driving a Volkswagen with a large rubber roach attached to the roof drove into our driveway.  He had a small exterminating company in Dallas and he also drove a bus at the DFW Airport.  Before the crash he had worked in a phone room raising money.  He thought the time was right and that he could raise enough money on his own to drill a well.  He left Oklahoma City with my hand-drawn maps and left me and Anne with a check for $7000.00.  We were on Cloud Nine.

Two years passed and he hadn’t drilled the well.  He finally called and told me in his slow Texas drawl that he had decided not to drill the well.  “My engineer says even if we find what we’re looking for that it will be drained.”  I spent the next hour convincing him that his engineer was wrong.  Tom D was (is) a good man.  He could hear the neediness in my voice and knew that if he had been there in person that he would have seen me on my knees.

“All right,” he finally said.  “You talked me into drilling the well but I’m only doing it because I believe in you.  I hope you don’t let me down.”

I barely had any swagger left by this time in my life.  As he began drilling the well, I knew that this was his one and only shot at success.  If he drilled a dry hole he was on his way back to driving a bus at DFW.  I had pretty much badgered him into drilling the location, a well his engineer was still shaking his head about.  My ego was damaged, my mojo gone and now I had a ton of guilt on my shoulders to make matters worse.

All sorts of scenarios are possible from this point of the story.  We could have drilled a dry hole prompting Tom D to commit suicide, or something equally horrible.  It didn’t happen that way.  We nailed the zone, just as planned.  Anne and I had three percent of the well and it came on for one-hundred-forty-five barrels of oil and four-hundred-fifty MCFG.  The well made us lots of money over the years and it is still producing.

Hundreds of wells later my damaged mojo has never fully recovered and I don’t suppose that it ever will.  As I returned from Noble County yesterday I thought about Tom D and that first well.  I also thought about the good times Anne and I had during the bad times surrounding us and it made me sad that she isn’t alive to experience this new oil boom.

Times are tough these days and maybe my age and my own experiences qualify me as someone that can give a little honest advice.  It’s just this – Never quit believing in yourself no matter how bad things become.  You can’t really lose your mojo.  Just keep looking for it and sooner or later it will return on its own, better than ever.

http://www.EricWilder.com

A very interesting report on the Government’s latest energy predictions.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080625/energy_outlook.html

http://www.EricWilder.com

BTU enigma has gasoline purchasers over a barrel.  Read this very interesting article and find out why.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

Chicory is as old as history itself, being a primary ingredient in many Roman dishes.  The plant’s green leafs (radicchio) are often eaten as a salad in Europe and the root is used as a coffee substitute.  It is largely unknown in the United States except for in the south, mostly around New Orleans.

Here is a Cajun recipe you probably have never heard of but try it anyway.  I found it in the French Acadian Cook Book published in 1955 by the Louisiana Acadian Handicraft Museum, Inc.  The recipe was contributed by Mrs. F.A. McKague of Jennings, Louisiana.  Even if you aren’t familiar with the culinary qualities of chicory give this simple recipe a try it and I’ll bet that you’ll become a certified aficionado.

1 lb of onions                            3 lbs Irish potatoes

1 head of chicory                      1 lb of bacon

Hard cooked eggs

Boil and dice potatoes and eggs in separate dish.  Fry diced bacon and onions until brown.  Mix potatoes, eggs and chopped chicory in frying pan and cook for five minutes.  Serve hot.  Serves six.

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Here is a graph showing oil and natural gas consumption for the United States from 1965 through 2007.

http://www.EricWilder.com

I-40 bisects Oklahoma City into what are really two distinct towns, the north side and the south side.  Just south of I-40, on Agnew, is a retail neighborhood known locally as Stockyards.  Stockyards is home of Cattleman’s Steak House, the oldest continuously operated restaurant in Oklahoma City.  It opened its doors in 1910 three years after Oklahoma became a state.

The restaurant and Stockyards holds many bittersweet memories for me as I was banking at the now defunct Stockyards Bank when my little oil company, caught up in the eighties oil bust, went “belly up.”  Cattleman’s is still a fixture for oilies, cattle raisers and other risk takers, a fitting legacy as the owner won it in a game of dice.

Many luminaries including John Wayne and Ronald Reagan have graced Cattleman’s doors since 1910.  The restaurant serves stiff drinks and the best steaks in Oklahoma City (no kidding!) along with lamb fries and their signature Cattleman’s Salad.  The recipe for their famous house dressing is a secret, but it’s hard keeping a secret for ninety-eight years.  Try it and enjoy.

8 oz. cream cheese                               ½ pint sour cream

Egg Beater = 1 egg                               1 Tsp salt

1 Tsp garlic powder                              ¼ cup Wesson Oil

¾ cup water

Blend in bowl larger than 2.5 quarts with electric mixer for about 3 minutes.  Add 1/4 cup of Wesson Oil and blend until smooth and well mixed.  Add ¾ cup of water and blend until smooth and well mixed.

Makes a bunch and you may wish to share a portion or two with your friends.

http://www.EricWilder.com

What’s driving the market, rumor or lack of suppy?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=agWVpHWQL5_I&refer=energy

http://www.EricWilder.com

Oh the games we play.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aPuqUuwWGsmM&refer=energy

http://www.EricWilder.com

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aiTpDklG14Es&refer=energy

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The crude oil summit has begun in Saudi Arabia.

Jeddah starts oil price dialogue, but no quick fix - Yahoo! News.

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Bodman speaks on eve of Saudi energy summit.

US energy chief: Low oil production drives price: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

http://www.EricWilder.com

Summer Solstice occurs on the year’s longest day.  It is the beginning of summer and has become an occasion for celebration since ancient times.  Long before the advent of organized religion, pagans gathered during Summer Solstice for feasting and the exchange of legend and lore.

Revels began on Solstice Eve with the lighting of a giant bonfire.  Remaining awake all night, revelers celebrated by chanting, dancing, and playing percussion instruments as they awaited first light of Summer Solstice’s dawn.

Ancient pagans believed in magic and felt the two yearly solstices provided portals to a magical realm.  Because of their beliefs in magic, Summer Solstice became a time for offering gifts to the spirits and exchanging presents with each other.  It was considered a highly mystical date when the prospect of physical and mental rebirth was high.

Voodoo is the New World result of the complex melding of African religion and European Catholicism.  Marie Laveau, the most famous voodoo priestesses in New Orleans, led frenzied revels on the banks of St. Johns Bayou on St. John’s Eve, a date that celebrates St. John the Baptist and loosely coincides with the Summer Solstice.

In Panther Stalking, my novel in progress, protagonist Buck McDivit investigates a pagan commune inhabited only by females.  Buck becomes enamored with Rima, the commune’s beautiful high priestess.  A pivotal moment in the plot occurs when he joins Rima and the inhabitants of the commune in a mystical and almost unbelievable Solstice’s Eve celebration.

http://www.EricWilder.com

During the years following the eighties oil bust there was a saying in Oklahoma.  “Last one to leave the State turn out the lights.”  The words were anything but hyperbole.  Oil dominated the state’s industry in the eighties and the oil bust all but wiped it out.

Before the bust, I remember stopping on the side of the road one night in Garfield County and counting seventeen drilling rigs.  Seventeen-hundred rigs were drilling onshore and offshore United States.  The increased drilling activity managed to stem the steep decline in crude oil and natural gas, at least for a few years.

Oil wasn’t the only industry to suffer during the eighties bust.  Banking, precipitated by the downfall of Penn Square Bank, suffered dearly.  For a while, a bank a day was closed in Oklahoma.  I personally banked at five different banks that all went under.  The FDIC had hundreds of employees in the State.  They not only managed to single-handedly decimate Oklahoma’s banking industry, they also had a large hand in crushing the local real estate industry.  As so often happens, Government intervention exacerbated the problem instead of alleviating it.

When the price of oil dropped to less than $10 a barrel, rig owners began selling their rigs for scrap.  Stripper wells, wells that produce less than 10 BOPD, were plugged because it cost more to operate them than they made every month.  Countless thousands of stripper wells, all still capable of producing oil and gas, were plugged and the production pipe shot off, pulled and sold for scrap – a valuable United States resource lost forever.

Oklahoma survived because it turned to other things such as computers, electronics and technology.  Today, the worst economy during the eighties is now the best economy of 2008.  Oklahoma sucked in its over inflated gut, re-cinched its belt and learned how to survive.

The economy of oil and gas has again returned to Oklahoma, fueled by $13 MCF natural gas and $130 oil.  The state receives a gross production tax from every MCF and BO, a tax not levied on any other industry – a tax they continued to levy even when oil was $10 a barrel.

Oklahoma is doing fine but, like all the other states, facing an insidious problem.  There isn’t enough crude oil left to supply the world’s ever growing demand.  Unlike the eighties we can’t just turn the oil tap to a higher notch.  It is already wide open.  This is affecting the economy and there are no simple solutions to the problem.

The place to start is energy conservation which we are actively doing by dramatically cutting back on our driving habits.  We consume about twenty-six million barrels of oil every day in the U.S., half of that amount in the form of gasoline.  Yes we are cutting back on our consumption but unfortunately many rapidly developing nations like China, India and Pakistan are sucking up what we don’t use.

It was once common to hear our politicians say that we have an endless supply of natural gas in this country.  This is yet another lie.  While the energy industry is presently stemming the tide of decline by developing shale gas such as the Barnett, Woodford and Haynesville, we are still only twenty years away from where we are now with respect to domestic oil production.

There is presently a dramatic price differential between crude oil and natural gas when comparing BTU to BTU.  If they were equal, natural gas would be trading for around $20 per MCF instead of $13 per MCF, the present market value.  The U.S. should take advantage of this price discrepancy by immediately converting all government vehicles to run on natural gas.  This could easily cut our dependence on foreign oil by several million barrels a day.  Then, until demand catches up with supply, the result would be lower oil (and thus gasoline) prices.

This is a short term fix but it would give us a little breathing room to develop alternative forms of energy.  My opinion, as horrible as it sounds, is to begin building more nuclear reactors for our primary energy needs and develop electrical or hydrogen powered vehicles that are infinitely more energy efficient than our present fleet.

Is it true that gross ignorance in the eighties is at least partially responsible for today’s very frightening energy crisis?  Yes!  I don’t often get on my soapbox but the country is today in a dire energy crisis and unlike the seventies this one is very real.  We all must quit pointing the finger of blame and act responsibly to correct the situation because the alternative is very dark indeed.

http://www.EricWilder.com

One of the largest international seaports, New Orleans has always been a melting pot of many nationalities. The most recent groups to migrate to New Orleans are the Vietnamese. Like the Spanish, Germans and Irish immigrants before them, the Vietnamese have made New Orleans their own, adopting both its culture and cuisine.

 Johnny Do is a cop in the novel Big Easy. He loves Cajun and Creole cooking and has adapted many local recipes to reflect the style of his Asian homeland. Vietnamese Jambalaya is one of Johnny’s favorite dishes.

8 ounces Asian pork sausage
1 pound raw shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1 pound sea scallops
3 tablespoons dry sherry, divided
3 tablespoons soy sauce, divided
1 whole chicken breast, skinned, boned and cut into bit-size pieces

5 tablespoons peanut oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 pinches powdered saffron
2 cups basmati rice
½ bunch fresh Thai basil, finely chopped 3 stalks lemon grass, very finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, coarsely diced

5 small banana peppers with ends removed
2 dozen mussels, cleaned, beards removed
½ cup bean sprouts

5 cups seafood stock

Cut sausage into 1/4-inch slices. Saute over medium-high heat until lightly seared and fat has been rendered. Remove sausage and place it on a paper towel to drain.

In a small bowl, toss shrimp and scallops with 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce and 2 tablespoons of the sherry. In another small bowl, toss chicken with remaining 1 tablespoon each soy sauce and sherry.

In a large wok, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion; saute until just translucent.  Add garlic, ginger and saffron, then add rice and stir to coat well with onion mixture, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add lemon grass.

While stirring, gradually add stock. Turn heat to high; allow stock to come to a boil, then reduce to a medium simmer. Add basil. Cook for 5 minutes. Add sausage, chicken and peppers. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.

Add shrimp, scallops and mussels, arranging on top of rice mixture. Sprinkle bean sprouts on top of seafood. Cook 5 to 8 minutes until shrimp and scallops are done and mussels have opened.

Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Remove any unopened mussels. Gently toss seafood and sprouts with rice and serve.

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Here is a pic of a shallow well (>900’) flowing back its load after it was acidized.

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Futures touched $13.271 today, the highest since $14.385 on Dec. 22, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, and have gained 77 percent this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=af74YBgS5L2Y&refer=energy

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It doesn’t take much to change oil prices, either up or down.

Crude Dips on Rising Supply - TheStreet.com.

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Rice wasn’t introduced as a Louisiana staple until after the Civil War. Today it is an integral part of New Orleans cuisine. My Mother tells a story of a distant cousin that married a man from south Louisiana and was soon divorced because she couldn’t properly prepare a pan of rice. While I don’t know if the story is true, I do know that rice is an important addition to almost every south Louisiana dish.

Most rice grown in the United States is the long grain white variety. The kind used by many New Orleans cooks is long grain white rice that is regular milled. This means the milling process has removed hulls, germ and outer bran layer producing distinct and fluffy grains when properly cooked. For those of you contemplating marriage to someone from New Orleans, here are simple instructions for preparing perfect rice every time.

Do not wash the rice before cooking or rinse it after cooking. Doing so will only wash away nutrients on the grains. Many cooks in New Orleans always use the same brand of rice. This is because the most important step in cooking perfect rice is using the correct amount of water and this may vary slightly from miller to miller. Too much water makes the cooked rice soggy and too little water leaves it dry. As a rule of thumb, use 2 1/4 cups of water for every cup of long grain rice. One cup of rice serves about four people.

The volume of rice triples in size so it is important to use a pan that is large enough to accommodate the desired final amount. Bring water to a boil on the stove top then stir in the rice, salt (about ½ teaspoon per cup of rice) and butter (about 2 teaspoons per cup of rice). Cover tightly and simmer for twenty minutes. Finally, remove the pan from the heat and uncover until the rice soaks up the remaining water. This usually takes about five minutes.

Once you cover the rice, don’t open the lid until you are ready to take it off the heat. Peeking is a definite no no. Doing so lets the steam escape and lowers the temperature. Don’t stir the rice after it comes to a boil. If you stir it, you’re going to have gummy rice - also a no no. Finally, don’t let the rice stay in the pan that you cooked it in for more than five to ten minutes. Doing so will cause the grains to pack. Got all that? If you do, your marriage is safe. Well, at least from the rice cooking aspect.

http://www.EricWilder.com

George Bush has this one exactly right.

Bush to Congress: Embrace energy exploration now: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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This is one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in the southwest.  It is located in a historic portion of Oklahoma City known as Stockyards.  The area holds many bittersweet memories for me as I was banking at now defunct Stockyard’s Bank when my oil company went “belly up” at the end of the last oil boom.

Stockyards City - Cattlemen's Steakhouse.

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I was on Amazon last night and decided to download the new Eagles’ album Long Road out of Eden.  It was late when I finished the download but I listened to a few of the tracks and remembered why I had always liked the group so much.  One of the songs reminded me of the 1975 song Lyin’ Eyes, and a time in my life when I felt a great empathy with the lyrics of that song.

I had sat a well just outside of Falls City, Nebraska during my last year at Cities Service Oil Company.  The little town is the place where the real events of the movie Boys Don’t Cry occurred.  It was, at first glance, a sleepy little village but after fourteen days I learned differently.

In1975 I was twenty-nine and still a year away from ending my waning marriage with first wife Gail.  Falls City is the county seat of Richardson County, the southeastern-most county in Nebraska.  The town is just across the border from Kansas.  I don’t know if Kansas is still a dry state, but it was then.  Because of this, Kansans young and old crossed the border to drink and raise the roof.

I was training a new geologist named Gary.  The engineer overseeing the well was a young man also named Gary.  The three of us soon learned the place was a little different, not quite a Sodom and Gomorrah but racier than anyplace I had ever lived.  Everyone seemed to have a boyfriend or girlfriend that wasn’t their husband or wife, and everyone in town soon knew who we were.

The two Garys and I drove over to the nearby town of Rulo one night to have dinner at a highly recommended catfish restaurant on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.  When we finished eating, we stopped into the local bar for a couple of beers.  A very loud band was playing in the bar housed in the lower level of an old three-story brick office building.  The lights were low, music loud, along with the cacophony of a hundred male and female revelers.  We entered the darkened double doors with rapt anticipation.

After pushing through the raucous crowd, we shoe-horned our way onto a long bench at a table along the back wall.  A pretty young woman with raven hair draping her yellow peasant blouse took our drink order and soon brought us two pitchers of the local brew.  The music from the band, if possible, grew even louder as we sat there, taking in the sights and sounds of the dark honky-tonk.

During a particularly frenetic drum solo, a young woman stood on a table and began stripping off her clothes.  Once the frenzied crowd realized what was happening, they began encouraging her with shouts and screams.  She was almost naked when her husband, or maybe her boyfriend, wrestled her off the table and carried her outside, the performance earning her and her boyfriend a resounding round of applause.  My eyes had begun to adjust to the dimly lit room and it was then I noticed the woman sitting across the table from me.  She was staring at me and she was smiling.

Already feeling the effects of several strong beers, I said, “Hi gorgeous, what’s your name?”

“Sonney,” she answered without hesitating.  “What’s yours?”

“I’m Eric and these two gentlemen are Gary and Gary.  Can I buy you a drink?”

Sonney wasn’t alone.  “Sure, if you’ll include my girlfriends.”

The three of us were more than happy to buy drinks for them and we would probably have continued to do so the rest of the night but they soon had to leave.  Before going, Sonney strolled around to our side of the table, gave me a big hug and slipped a piece of torn napkin into my hand before she and her two friends disappeared into the rampant humidity of a Nebraska summer night.  I didn’t look at the note until I was alone in my motel room.

The napkin bore Sonney’s hastily scrawled phone number and said simply, “Call me.”

I was married at the time and even though the marriage was floundering, I had never cheated.  It was one thing to flirt with someone in a dark bar after several strong beers but something quite different to take it a step further.  Still –

Two days passed before I called Sonney and made a date.  I picked her up at her apartment where her mother was baby-sitting for her three-year-old daughter.  I took her to Falls City’s only nice restaurant and we had a good time.  Somewhere along the way I invited her to Oklahoma City for the weekend.

I drove home a few days later leaving Gary to watch the well.  On the way I heard the Eagles’ Lyin’ Eyes at least what seemed a dozen times.  The lyrics caused me to wonder if I could ever live with myself again after deceiving myself, my wife and a young woman that had no idea about my situation.

I never saw Sonney again.  I remedied my state of affairs by giving Gary Sonney’s phone number and begging him to call her.  Sonney wasn’t enamored with me.  She was only looking for a father for her three-year-old daughter and Gary fit the bill as good as me.

Gary and Sonney never had much of a relationship even though she did spend a couple of weekends with him in Oklahoma City.  My marriage continued for another year but thinking back, it was effectively dead the moment I decided to call Sonney’s number and ask her out.

It’s been years since the Eagles last released an album.  As I listen to the poignant lyrics and complex guitar riffs of their new album tonight I realize why a generation loved their music.  I also realize something about myself that I never knew before, or perhaps never before admitted.

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Here we go again.

Oil hits record near $140 a barrel on dollar, fire: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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As a geologist, I often visit drilling wells. When I do, more likely than not, the mineral owner will regale me with a familiar story that usually sounds something like this:

"An oil company drilled a well on the south forty back in ‘52," the farmer might say, pointing at the rolling hill near his fence line. "They struck oil and lots of gas but plugged the well anyway."

"Why did they do that?" I always ask, even though I already know the answer.

"Probably because the crooked operator oversold the well.  He didn’t have enough interest to go around so instead of going to jail he plugged it as a dry hole so no one would ever know."

I’ve heard the story many times, a rural legend told and retold by disappointed mineral owners dreaming of vast oil wealth but faced with the reality of only endless barrels of saltwater underlying their property. Years ago in a Kansas wheat field, I helped propagate the legend.

As a young exploration geologist with Cities Service Oil Company, I was sitting a well near Dighton in Lane County, Kansas. The wildcat well was running "low" with little hope of finding oil or gas. It was a gorgeous summer day, the clear Kansas sky robin egg blue. The old "double" rotary rig had just made a connection when I heard a horrible screech. A hundred feet from the rig, I turned to see what was happening.

As I watched, the pipe dropped thirty feet in less than thirty seconds. Knowing what had just occurred, I headed for the rig floor, yelling as I ran.

"Pull up! Pull up!" I screamed, out of breath after climbing the steep stairs to the doghouse. The driller had already anticipated my orders, pulling up on the drill bit and circulating the bit in the hole.

There are no caverns at 4000 feet but we had just drilled into a thick zone so porous that the bit had virtually dropped thirty feet in thirty seconds. There is no empty porosity at that depth and I knew we had encountered a previously unknown reservoir hopefully filled with oil. I drove to the nearest phone and called for a drillstem test to find out.

A drillstem test is an open hole test to determine what kind of fluid or gas is trapped within a particular zone. It measures quantities and pressures and is a good indication of a well’s potential productivity. It is simply a tool attached to the drill pipe. It has a packer at the top of the tool that isolates the zone of interest. When the tool is rotated, it releases the hydrostatic pressure and whatever fluid or gas is in the zone rushes into the drill pipe. I liken the procedure to putting your finger on the top hole of a straw and lowering it into a glass of water. When you remove your finger, water enters the straw.

It was a clear Sunday morning as the tester prepared to open the tool. Word had spread of the potential oil discovery and many cars filled with interested Kansans faced the drilling rig. When we opened the tool, they got what they came for.

The tester had rigged a pipe that pointed out to the mud pit. If anything came out of the zone, it would flow up the pipe for all to see. I was standing on the rig floor and could hear the rumble from below as the tool was opened. Within seconds I smelled the pungent odor of crude oil. Then I heard the scream of natural gas as it exited with great velocity from the pipe. The gas subsided, followed quickly by thick black fluid shooting from the pipe into the mud pit. Oil, I thought, my heart racing. The well was flowing at a rate of at least a thousand barrels a day. We had a major discovery on our hands, possibly the biggest in a decade. My elation lasted only a moment.

The tester caught some of the fluid in a bucket. He frowned after tasting the liquid from a sample on the tip of his finger. "Saltwater," he said. "Nothing but saltwater."

Not wanting to believe him, I plunged my hand into the bucket and licked the black fluid from my palm. He was correct. The contents of the bucket held nothing but black stagnate saltwater that reeked of oil. The mineral owner was on location and asked, "Am I rich?"

"No, it’s only saltwater," I said.

He didn’t believe me. Neither did the excited Kansans exiting the location in a trail of dust to tell their friends and family of the new oil discovery they had just witnessed. We plugged the well several days later and I’m sure the mineral owner and everyone else that saw the incident thought that Cities Service Oil Company had plugged a monster oil well on purpose for some nefarious reason.

Today when I see a mineral owner approach, I just listen to their story and nod my head. I’ve heard it all before and, yes, I guess I’m part of that rural legend that somehow never seems to go away.

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The Saudi’s attempt to single-handedly lower the price of gasoline.

UN chief: Saudi to boost oil production: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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The little town where I grew up is located in the northwest corner of Louisiana, a part of the state not usually thought of as swampy.  Perception matters little because a very swamp-like body of water known as Black Bayou exists less than a mile from my parent’s house.

Southern summers are always hot, northwest Louisiana no exception.  I was a sophomore in college before my parents ever got an air conditioner and it always seemed more comfortable being outside rather than in.  We often wore our swim trunks beneath our jeans so we could go swimming and cool off whenever we were near water, almost anytime because lakes, ponds, streams and bayous abound near Vivian.

Black Bayou is a shallow body of water, usually not much deeper than ten feet.  Like the name implies its surface is coffee-colored with visibility little more than a couple of inches.  Giant cypress trees with bloated trunks line the bayous perimeter - in the water that is - and they resemble old women draped in shawls because of the Spanish moss hanging from their outstretched branches.

With algae and aquatic plants growing abundantly in the water, Black Bayou would probably not qualify as a prime swimming spot for someone from California or Florida but to us Louisiana boys it was like a dip in a tropical oasis.  We would swim almost anywhere but it didn’t stop us from trying to frighten each other with tales of giant alligators and huge gars with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

One summer day my friends Billy and Ronnie and I went fishing on Black Bayou.  The hot Louisiana sun sat directly overhead, cooking down on us as we sat, cane poles in hand, on the bayou’s bank,.  Without even a nibble for the last hour, Billy suggested we quit fishing and go for a swim instead.  We had an old wooden paddle boat so we pushed it toward deeper water and piled in.

“I know you two are probably afraid but when we get out to the middle I’m going to jump in head first and go all the way to the bottom,” Billy said.

“Who’s afraid?” Ronnie asked.

Billy had big ears that protruded straight out from the short brown hair on his head.  Like Ronnie and me he was skinny as a rail, his face freckled from constant exposure to the sun.  He was grinning, obviously pleased with the concerned reaction elicited by his insinuation of our bravery, or lack thereof.

“If you’re not afraid, you should be.  There’s hollows down there twenty feet deep and that’s where the biggest gators and gars lurk.”

“Jump in,” I said.  “We’re right behind you.”

Billy did just that, holding his nose and tumbling backwards out of the boat like we’d seen Lloyd Bridges do on the TV show Sea Hunt.  Not wanting to step down into the water overgrown with aquatic vegetation, Ronnie and I followed his lead.

Billy was no braver than Ronnie and me but he was enjoying the macho display of daring he was trying to project.  He was ten feet from the boat when he ducked his head beneath the bayou’s inky water and dove toward the bottom.  Ronnie and I waited for him to surface, beginning to wonder as the seconds ticked away if he’d  perhaps become trapped beneath a waterlogged stump, or some other submerged debris.

Like most everyone that spends lots of time in the water, Billy had a good set of lungs and nearly two minutes had passed before his skinny face and big ears came splashing up out of the water.

“Come on, you two.  It’s great down there.  I think I even grabbed hold of a big gator’s tail.”

Billy’s smiling smirk indicated he was having a good laugh at our expense.  We weren’t worried about his daring-do behavior; we’d seen it all before.  I was more concerned about the slimy tentacles of lime-green algae meandering through my toes in the warm water.  It was then that Billy let out a bloodcurdling scream and began stroking toward the boat as fast as his skinny arms could move.

So absorbed at getting into the boat, he almost capsized it as he hurried out of the water.  Ronnie and I assumed that it was just another trick to scare us.  We’d both experienced his antics before and neither of us was going to bite this time around.  We both stayed put, treading water while trying mostly unsuccessfully to keep our toes away from the icky plants caressing them.  When Billy failed to stick his head up after five minutes, we decided to investigate.

Ronnie held one side of the boat as I crawled in, and I balanced the opposite side for him as he followed.  Billy was sitting in the bottom of the boat, white as a sheep and wielding a paddle.

“Quit your act,” Ronnie said.  “We’re not falling for it this time.”

Billy finally peeked up over the side of the boat and then dragged himself onto one of the plank-like seats.  Without speaking, he pointed to a spot about ten feet from the boat.  It took only a moment for Ronnie and me to see what he was pointing at.

A half-submerged tree protruded from the shallow water not far from where we had just been and two of the largest water moccasins I had ever seen were sunning on the branches.  As we watched, a third snake swam past them, his ugly head cutting a periscope-like path as he moved steadily toward us.  With no exchange of information other than our shared snake sighting we grabbed our paddles and began stroking back toward shore.

Neither Ronnie nor I bothered smiling or razing Billy as we hiked down the lonely dirt road back to Vivian.  Our butts were too puckered, and the resultant tightening it caused made talking and any attempt at facial expressions virtually impossible.

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Do the Saudis have additional oil to sell?  The financial community awaits with rapt attention.

Saudi oil chief to address reports of oil increase: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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Pre-weekend hype to roil the markets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=ajynjbyUgDss&refer=energy

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My friend Dave Beatty lives in Livingston, Louisiana.  He’s forgotten more about south Louisiana than I will ever know and like many south Louisianans, he can tell a good story.  Here is Satsuma Twenty, a Lake Pontchartrain story from Dave, my first guest contributor.

SATSUMA TWENTY

By Dave Beatty

My older brother, Billy, and I were spending some time on his son's thirty-six foot trawler.  The boat is berthed at a marina on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, Madisonville to be exact.  This area has become known as the Northside and is a bedroom community for New Orleans, maybe not so much after Katrina.  It is, if not the fastest growing area of Louisiana, then for sure the second. 

Billy's son told us of a very good place to get po-boys and hamburgers and it was just down the street from the marina.  So, off we went.  It is a typical po-boy shop.  You order at the counter from the menu hanging on a sign behind the counter, wait for you name/number to be call when ready.  Well, our number was called and up we jumped to get a taste of the great po-boys and fried onions, with ice tea.

I was feeling very generous so I jumped in and said I would buy.  Here's where the fun starts.  You see while ordering I did a little addition, as it turned very little, and thought I had it.  We get to the counter and I whip out twenty dollars to cover the bill.  Remember, I don't get out much.  I flashed my twenty dollar bill, submitted it for payment expecting a little change, not much just a few coins.

The girl out look down at the money and then did it.  She extended the old open hand, palm up and started curling her fingers towards herself.  You know the signal, it says either to come on, you want some more of me: or, and in this case, signal that there is not even enough.  So, I pulled out another five, and you can guess, more fingers.  It seems that a "Satsuma Twenty" doesn't go very far on the Northside. 

After this, the big joke around is that "There is no way a Satsuma Twenty will cover that." 

The laugh was on me, but it was worth it because to this day me and my brother still get a big laugh out of the story of the Satsuma Twenty. 

By the way, Satsuma is the little country road where I live.

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Here’s a very informative picture I found on the EIA website.

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While digging through my bookshelf today I came across a cookbook written by my Cousin Angela titled The Lazy Weekend Chef.  I had almost forgotten what a wonderful cook Angela, a former Boston radio personality, is.  One of the first recipes I turned to in the book reminded me of something else I had all but forgotten.

When Anne and I first married we lived in a large house with many windows that overlooked a small body of water called Ski Island Lake.  My Cousin Skip, Angela’s brother, worked for Capitol Records at the time and had been recently transferred to OKC from Austin, Texas.  Since he was new to the City he spent lots of time with us and we enjoyed him immensely.

Skip would usually ride a bike from his apartment to our house.  He was slender and had a goatee and thinning hair he almost always covered with a jaunty Panama hat.  Skip knows more about the recording industry than almost anyone on earth, and he and his wife Connie recently retired to Austin after years in New York City and Los Angeles.

Whenever Skip visited Anne and me during his short stay in Oklahoma City, he always brought us LP’s or tapes, mostly of new and rising artists that we had never heard of before, but soon would.  He could make salsa and guacamole dip like no other person I have ever known, either before or since and here is his simple recipe.

5 green onions                                      1 clove garlic

¼ cup fresh cilantro                              1 half lemon or lime, squeezed

3 or 4 jalapeno peppers, seeded           3 ripe tomatoes

(How hot do you want it?)                    Salt and pepper

1 Tbsp olive oil

After making sure all the ingredients are crisp and ripe, uniformly dice on a chopping block with a sharp knife and then blend very gently in a food processor.  After transferring the ingredients to a large serving bowl add the lemon juice (or lime if that’s what floats your boat) and salt and pepper to taste.  Chill for an hour or so in the refrigerator while you slug a few Coronas or Tecates, or just grab a bag of your favorite tortilla chips and indulge yourself immediately.  Either way you will be in Heaven.

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Here is a very interesting graph that shows how the devastating effects of hurricanes are detrimental to the production of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico (the U.S.’s largest oil producing province).

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Demand continues to increase as production hits the proverbial brick wall.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aiSucgXE2muM&refer=energy

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Buck McDivit was my (Eric Wilder’s) first protagonist in Ghost of a Chance.  He is set to encore in my novel in progress tentatively titled Panther Stalking.  Ghost took place in east Texas.  Panther Stalking occurs in Logan County, Oklahoma, the county just north of Oklahoma City.

In Panther Stalking Buck does some detective work for Clayton O’Meara, his former employer.  O’Meara owns a large cattle spread and some of his cows are coming up missing.  There are complications.  One of Clayton’s employees and maybe even his longtime business partner are possibly involved.  Buck’s former girlfriend has a secret that could cause him a problem.  A rural community of right-wing whackos has focused their attention on him, and an all female commune in the middle of Clayton’s ranch complicates the situation.  Look for Panther Stalking early in 2009.  Until then, here is a short excerpt from the work in progress:

Shorty’s horse sidled forward, directed only by instinct as their path began dropping downward into a deep hole in the ground - a narrow canyon fully one hundred feet below the area’s normal surface.  The deeply dissected gully disappeared into blackness and Shorty quickly melded into the shadows as he hurried after Garth and Johnny.

Spooked by being herded away from their normal nighttime shelter, the cattle continued voicing their alarm, their hooves clattering against cobbles in the dry streambed and echoing against steep walls of the narrow canyon.  No light penetrated the thick mass of tree limbs that enclosed the deep void almost like a dark tunnel.  The three men had an answer, treading their way by the spare illumination of headlamps they wore on their hats.  It was all they needed.

The canyon followed a straight line for almost a mile.  No one, even were they near, would have detected the presence of the rustlers, their mounts or the lowing cattle thanks to the foliage-covered tunnel.  The three men soon slowed the cattle and herded them up a camouflaged trail, flicking off their headlamps as they exited the trees.  Though still dark, full moon and starlight seemed like Broadway on New Year’s Eve compared with the eerily-lit tunnel they had just exited.

Up ahead they saw an oilfield tank battery and a slow-moving pumping unit singing a sad tune with its moving rods.  A cattle trailer attached to an old Ford pickup awaited them, along with a newer Chevy and horse trailer.  Shorty dismounted without bothering to tie his colt.  Opening the trailer’s rear gate, he yanked out a ramp so that Garth and Johnny could begin herding the cows into the trailer.

“We got too many.  They ain’t all gonna fit,” Shorty said.

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Stocks open lower as oil prices bounce higher; Bernanke says deep downturn unlikely

Stocks open lower as oil prices surge: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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Obama taps into America’s fear of high gasoline prices and promises Socialism to combat it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080609/pl_nm/usa_politics_dc_95

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http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080609/saudi_oil.html

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The modern oil industry employs many safe and effective fracturing methods to enhance the flow of oil from producing wells.  This was not true during the early annals of oil exploration and production.

Nitroglycerin was first used in 1867 to “shoot” a well in an attempt to enhance production.  The experiment was a success and led to The Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company obtaining a patent on the process.  Independent shooters, unwilling to pay for rights to the process, often shot wells at night earning them the nickname “moonlighters.”  The patent expired in 1883.

Shooting a well consisted of a shooter filling a metal canister with nitroglycerin.  The canister was lowered into the borehole of a well and ignited, the resultant blast sending mud, water and oil high over the crown block.  Nitroglycerin is highly explosive.  A half gallon can supposedly blow a hole in the ground large enough to bury a freight train.  It is also unstable and very dangerous to handle.  Accidents often occurred.

Despite the risk, shooting a well greatly enhanced the flow of oil and gas and the process continued until safer more effective treatments were found.  One note of interest:  Clark Gable worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma before becoming an actor and reportedly sometimes assisted in the shooting of wells.

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Producers urged to find a way to increase daily oil production stalled at 85 million barrels a day since 2005.

Oil producers urged to boost output as prices soar: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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The world’s one-time largest oil field celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005.  The discovery well for the Glen Pool, located 14 miles south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, came roaring in during the early morning hours of November 22, 1905.  At its peak, the field produced 117,000 barrels of oil per day.  The field was so prolific that oil was stored in shallow ponds dug around the producing wells.  The real story though is how the Ida Glen #1 was discovered in the first place.

Oil was first noticed in Oklahoma by Native Americans.  They found oil seeps and springs that they collected and used for medicines and lubricants.  News of these “medicine springs” first attracted oil explorers to the state.  One of the explorers, drawn by the promise of black gold and untold riches, was Robert F. Galbreath.

Galbreath came from Ohio, drawn by earlier successful drilling in the area by others, to seek his fortune.  He soon convinced a local investor, Frank Chelsey, to bankroll his dream.  Drilling for oil in 1905 was very different than drilling for oil today.  Leases were cheap and most of the drilling done by cable tool rigs made of wood, on location, by local rig builders.  After acquiring a block of leases for no apparent geologic reason other than they were cheap and accessible, Galbreath and Chelsey had a cable tool rig built and began drilling.

Cable tool drilling was very slow, about 3’ per hour.  Galbreath and Chelsey did the work themselves, each taking turns while living and sleeping on the rig floor.  Oil had been discovered in commercial quantities nearby four years earlier.  When they finally reached the Red Fork Sand, the producing zone at the earlier discovery, they encountered only a puff of gas.  Galbreath and Chelsey had drilled below 1,400’, their money for the project all but depleted.

Little is known of the actual conversations that followed between the two men.  One thing is known: their money and their energy were exhausted.  They had already penetrated the deepest known producing reservoir in the area.  No one at the time had any idea of what might lie below.  Smart men would have packed their bags and gone home.

Galbreath and Chelsey weren’t smart men.  They were something more:  among the first of the breed known as wildcatters.  They’d followed their hearts and guts, not their brains, to that field in northeast Oklahoma.  Thankfully, they decided to drill deeper.

The next 100’ proved fortuitous.  During the early morning hours of November 22, 1905, Galbreath heard a gurgling sound.  He pulled out the percussive bit and lowered the bailer into the hole.  When he pulled it up, he witnessed the first evidence of the black gold that he and fellow wildcatter Chelsey had sought.  When pressure broke through the cumulus in the well bore and oil blew out of the hole, over the crown block, the two knew for sure.

Near destitution, Galbreath and Chelsey quickly became millionaires.  The Glen Pool, to date having produced more than 325 million barrels of oil, has made more money than both the California gold rush and the Colorado silver rush.  The discovery led to the founding of Tulsa, once known as the “oil capitol of the world.”

The Glen Pool is 100 years old but the real story is that of Galbreath and Chelsey – two original wildcatters and, for sure, true American heroes.

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This news is truly amazing and the article speaks for itself.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080606/oil_prices.html

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Caddo Lake is a large, naturally-formed body of water that encompasses parts of northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana.  Legend has it that Caddo Lake was formed by the New Madrid Earthquake.  One thing is certain.  It is little changed since since the early 1900’s when the world’s very first offshore platform found oil beneath its shallow surface.

Geologically, Caddo Lake is situated at the highest structural point of the deep-seated subsurface feature known as the Sabine Uplift.  In the early 1900’s, many high-flowing oil wells already surrounded the lake.  Most oil explorers had little doubt that the strata below Caddo contained even more oil.  The problem was how to get to it.  When the federal government dammed the lake in 1911, returning it to a deeper depth, the problem grew even larger.

Oil leases beneath Caddo’s shallow 8,000 acres were controlled by the Levee Board.  When the Levee Board put these leases up for bid, only one entity, Gulf Refining Company of Louisiana, did so.

Little is known about the discussions that must have ensued in order to convince Gulf’s management to make its last minute bid for the leases.  One thing is certain, they must have been interesting and heated.  What occurred is that some unknown person with vision, great foresight and an explorer’s mentality convinced Gulf to risk a lot of money and effort on a technology never before attempted.

The risk was worth it.  Once Gulf had secured the leases it had a crew drive pilings into Caddo’s shallow water.  A platform was constructed on the pilings.  From this platform, the Ferry Lake #1 was drilled and completed in 1911.  Historically, the Ferry Lake #1 was the world’s first offshore well.

If you rented a small fishing boat today and motored out across Caddo’s sleepy surface you’d find little has changed since 1911.  The coffee-colored water is still shallow and you might see the head of an alligator as it peeks up from the bottom.  Giant cypress trees still grow in the water, Spanish moss draping from their limbs in lazy waves.  And you’d still see the remnants of many of the original wooden platforms.  Some of them are operational with timeless pumping units still at work atop of them.

Books chronicle many heroes, innovators, inventors and explorers that have shaped the history of the world.  But like the unknown person or persons that convinced Gulf Refining to drill the world’s first offshore oil well, many more heroes, innovators, inventors and explorers have shaped the world in ways we’ll never know and can only imagine.  Although unknown, their contributions are just as important.

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Oil rises near $132 on price spike prediction: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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Crude oil registers the biggest single-day increase in the history of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080605/oil_prices.html

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The Summit and the debate continue.

UN summit: corn on table or in tank? - Yahoo! News.

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What seemed like a good idea at the time has resulted in higher food costs around the world.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/biofuels-under-fire-summit-agreement/story.aspx?guid={E24AA109-986D-489C-AAFC-4B93ECBE663D}&siteid=yahoomy

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I’m often asked how I came to write my first novel.  My wife Anne and I had a little oil company that got caught up in the eighties oil bust.  The company was thrown into involuntary bankruptcy on the day before Thanksgiving in 1983.  We were soon tossed out as debtors-in-possession and a trustee was appointed.  What ensued in our lives was total chaos.

Anne was devastated and I was incensed.  We had an IBM AT (one of the first personal computers) and a DOS-based word processing program called Framework.  With self-righteous adrenaline coursing through my veins I began writing a novel loosely based on our company’s bankruptcy.

That finished novel still resides in a box somewhere in my garage.  Yes, I made all the freshman errors that a new writer experiences (bad plot, skewed point of view, too much description, screwball dialogue, etc.) but I learned one thing for sure - I love to write.  I began checking books about writing out of the library and I began haunting local writer’s gatherings (you may remember my story about attending a romance writer’s conference).

I also learned that there are more new books published every year than there are readers to read all of them, and since a writer only makes a buck or so for every volume they sell, there’s often little profit in the endeavor unless you are John Grisham or Clive Cussler.

With all of that in mind here is my advice to every one of you that thinks you have a book lodged deep within you.  First, find the motivation and then write it as fast as you can.  That’s right, don’t edit a thing, just regurgitate it, and get it on paper (or in a computer file) as quickly as you possibly can.

Don’t even start if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.  Don’t do it for the money, but because you love the tactile feel of a pen or pencil in your hand, and adore the mental vision of blue ink forming beautiful patterns on a blank sheet of paper.  Do it because you love creating fantastical worlds and plots, and because there’s a story in your head that needs extracting before your brain bursts from the pressure, and above all keep writing even if your own mother laughs when she reads your magnum opus.

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Here is a recipe I found in the wonderful cookbook Hot off the Press – Good Cooking from the Pages of the State-Times Morning Advocate published in 1977 by Capital City Press.  This recipe was submitted by Lillian Gremillion of Frisco.

BEIGNETS (The French Market Type)

½         pkg. Yeast cake                                               3 ½      cups plain flour

1          cup milk                                                           ¾         tbs salt

2          tbs sugar                                                           1          egg

2          tbs cooking oil                                                   powdered sugar

Soften yeast cake in 1/3 cup lukewarm water to form a paste.  Warm the milk and add sugar, oil and yeast mixture.  Gradually stir in 2 cups flour and the salt.  Stir until it forms a batter.  Stir in egg until it is mixed well, and then add rest of flour.  Mix well.  Cover and set in warm place about 1 ½ hours to rise.  Take dough out and roll until about ¼ inch thick.  Cut in 2 inch pieces.  Place on cookie sheet or pan and let rise another half hour.  Fry dough until it is brown and then remove and let drain.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy.

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Natural gas rises above $12/MCF which one industry analyst says is cheap if we have another hurricane like Katrina.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a8Jmxo9aUCug&refer=energy

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The last rent house that Anne and I lived in was separated from several giant apartment complexes by a large field overgrown with brush.  Tenants in the apartments were constantly coming and going, often abandoning their unwanted pets along the way.  Since we had three cats of our own and treated them like kings and queens, some of the cast offs naturally gravitated toward our house.

Our three cats were Hamlet, a black male; Whiskers, a black and white female and also Hamlet’s mother; and Chani a calico (calicos are always female).  We fed them every evening on the front porch and it wasn’t long before we had other hungry cats nosing around, looking for food.  None of them ever went away hungry.

We soon had three new cats that called our place home.  The O.J. Simpson trial was in the news at the time so we named the stray orange fixed male O.J.  The female brindle that appeared about the same time naturally became Nicole.  Bootsie was a very large black and white tom with a black marking on his white chin that looked like a boot.  Unlike O.J. and our other cats, Bootsie still packed all his equipment.

O.J. was friendly.  Nicole was standoffish and Bootsie aggressive, terrorizing all the other cats and generally acting like the bully on the block.  We weren’t doing well financially at the time and couldn’t afford to take them to the vet for their shots and examinations.

“When we get some extra money,” Anne said, “We’ll take them to Dr. D and get their shots.  And when we do, we’re getting Bootsie fixed.”  The thought worried me because Big Black was a full grown cat.  “He’s a cat, Eric, not a human.  We need to neuter him and that’s what we are going to do.”

“But -” I complained.

“No buts.  The only thing saving his little balls is we can’t afford to take him to the vet right now.”

Anne had lung cancer at the time and she told me, “Please don’t let me die in a rent house.”

It was 1997, not a very good year in the oil biz, but I had somehow managed to sell a geologic idea to an oil company.  With my profit, I leased three-hundred and twenty acres on a prospect idea that I had in Major County, Oklahoma.  It was a wonderful prospect and I was immediately offered my money back and a twenty-five thousand dollar profit.  I was hungry but I knew the deal was worth much more.  It didn’t matter because I still got a very large lump in my throat when I turned down the offer.

Two weeks passed, my rear-end puckered, praying that I hadn’t  fallen in love with a prospect that was never going to sell, at least for the price that I was asking.  After another week passed, I considered returning, hat in hand, to the company whose offer I had rejected and beg them to take it for twenty-thousand dollars.  As things would happen I didn’t have to.

Another company finally decided they couldn’t live without the prospect, almost doubling the first company’s offer.  I probably could have sold the deal for even more money but this proposal I didn’t reject.  With it I had enough money to make a large down payment on the house where I still live, and my good friend Banker Bob bent his bank’s rules slightly to lend me the rest.  We even had enough money left to take the cats to the vet.

I was nervous for Bootsie but needn’t have been.  Following the operation, his aggression quickly disappeared.  He also stopped fighting and bullying the other cats.  When Anne and I got the two Maine Coon Kittens, Rouge and Tabitha, Bootsie took them under his wing, lying with them on the couch and grooming them with his tongue.  When people came to visit, Bootsie would jump into their arms and put his arms around their necks. All the other cats, needless to say, were very happy with his new persona.

Sadly, Bootsie, like Anne, has gone to the great beyond, but while he was here his operation transformed him into one of the most lovable cats that I have ever had.  I’m not really sure what the moral of this story is, but just in case it gave any of you ladies out there ideas about your tomcatting husbands, I ask you to remember Anne’s wise words:  “He’s a cat, Eric, and not human.”

http://www.ericwilder.com

It’s not even summer yet but Easterners are already bracing for winter and record heating oil prices.

Heating oil sticker shock to hit New England: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Back in the early nineties two petroleum engineers, friends of mine asked me to testify for them at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission on a geologic matter.  Their geologist was out of town, on his honeymoon.

“The map is already done,” Irv told me. 

“All you have to do is go over it for the Judge and answer a few questions for the group that’s protesting our spacing hearing,” Ron added.

The task seemed simple enough and I agreed to help them out.  The hearing was scheduled for consideration in Tulsa.  As we all drove east down the Turner Turnpike, their lawyer John regaled us with stories about when he was a Captain in Korea, working for the Military Police.

It was spring, the weather wet and stormy, much like Oklahoma’s weather today.  Running water filled ditches on both sides of the turnpike and clouds were a dark shade of ominous gray.  You didn’t have to be an Okie to know there was yet another storm brewing overhead.

The Tulsa branch of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission is in an old school building near the west edge of town.  We headed for the coffee shop to discuss our strategy and to look at Mike’s exhibit.

“What do you think?” Ron asked after I had studied the map in silence for a solid ten minutes.

“There’s a little bust in the contouring,” I said.

Irv grabbed the map out of my hand and said, “Where?”

I showed it to him.  “It’s not a material bust.  Just something I’d have probably done myself if I had been contemplating marriage and honeymoon in Jamaica.”

John, our attorney, appeared concerned and Irv asked, “What’ll we do?”

“I can correct the contour with a pencil but it changes the map’s interpretation.  I don’t think that it would be to your benefit,” I said.

“We can ask for a continuance,” John said.

“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Ron said.  “Like Eric said, the bust isn’t material.  The other side probably won’t even notice it.”

“What are you grinning at?” Ron asked me, seeing the smirk on my face.

“Mike, the opposing attorney used to work with me at Texas Oil & Gas.  If he or his geologist notices the bust they’re going to scream bloody murder.”

“So?  What can they do about it?”

“They’ll pick us apart,” John said.  “Maybe we should call for a continuance.”

“Nah, we’re here.  Let’s do it,” Ron said.  “If things get nasty then put me on the stand.”

“Is that all right with you, Eric?” asked Irv.

“Hey, I’m just a hired gun.  You tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll give it a shot, but – “

“But what?”  Ron demanded.

“Mike is an attack dog.  If he smells blood, he won’t stop until he has us gutted and quartered.”

“I say we’re here and we should put on our case.  What we’re asking for is the right thing.  That little bust in the map is immaterial.”

“I think Nixon said the same thing about the Watergate Tapes,” John said with a grin.  “But hey, it’s your call.  Eric and I are both just hired guns.”

“Don’t give me that malarkey,” Ron said.  “We need to get a ruling on this hearing today.  Let’s go for it.”

“Fine,” I said, “But I think we should disclose the error and explain why it has no relevant meaning.”

“It’s such a minor error, they’ll never notice it,” Ron said.  “Let’s don’t show our hand before it’s played.”

I had a lump in my throat as I was sworn in before the judge.  I knew that there was a narrow line I had to traverse without telling a lie.  I also felt a little dirty because I intended to testify only to what was positive about our case and say nothing about what was negative about it.

John understood my quandary and questioned me about the exhibit without asking me to stretch the truth.  Shortly after he finished, I sat facing the doggedly resolute eyes of Mike, the opposing attorney.  The first words out of his mouth were, “Mr. Wilder, did you notice that there is a geologic bust in your exhibit?”

“Yes, but it’s not material,” I said, protesting.

Mike slammed his hand against the lectern.  “Not material?  Judge, this exhibit is a total fabrication meant to showcase their argument in the best possible light – a false light,” he added.

“Judge,” John said, standing.  “May I approach?”

Mike and John stood in front of the administrative law judge’s bench, bickering back and forth when a bailiff burst into the courtroom.

“Judge, we have to evacuate to the auditorium.  There’s a tornado bearing down on us.”

We had all heard the rain and hail pelting the windows.  Now the wind had picked up and was rocking the walls.  “Recess,” the Judge said.  “Everyone follow the bailiff.”

A hundred or so of us sat for around thirty minutes in the auditorium of the old school building, expecting the roof to fly off at any minute.  Finally the tornado passed but the storm continued, rocking the old building with rain and wind.  Because of the continuing tornado watch, the Judge had little choice but to call for a continuance to the hearing.  Ron laughed as we headed back down the Turner Turnpike toward Oklahoma City.

“John, I should have listened to your advice.  We were getting our asses kicked in there.”

Talk of the hearing quickly changed to the tornado that barely missed us, and then to other things.  I’m a boxing fan and as John began regaling us with tales again, I learned that he was once the manager of Sean O’Grady, Oklahoma City’s former world champ.

To put a cap on this story, Mike the geologist returned from his honeymoon and corrected the minor bust on his map.  By the time the next hearing occurred, attorney Mike had lost all his explosive ammo and Ron and Irv prevailed easily.

Tonight as I visited my Dad at Brighton Gardens in Oklahoma City, I glanced at name on the door next to his.  It said: Captain John R.  There was his picture on the door and I could see it was John, our attorney.  Years have passed since I last saw him, but there was no doubt that one of the best minds in Oklahoma oil and gas law was now in the reminiscence (a more politically correct name for Alzheimer’s) ward.

The picture reminded me of the Tulsa tornado story.  It also reminded me that life is good at throwing curve balls, and sometimes when it does the only thing you can do is ask for a recess.  And if you don’t, Old Mother Nature may just request it for you.

http://www.ericwilder.com