Wednesday, January 10, 2018

January 8, 2018

Michael Putney
WPLG-TV Channel 10

Yo, Mikey,

In response to your question about Boss Fiedler’s reaction to my suggestion about drilling due East of the former world HQ of the Miami Herald, let’s just say he was not amused. Now that he is permanently ensconced in Boston, “the home of the bean and the cod”, plus Senator Lieawatha Warren who will try to make teepees and wickiups eligible for participation in Section 8 subsidies, he is still trying to figure out how the Adirondacks, a word that means “dry and bitter earth”, came to be called that centuries before acid rain appeared. Also, why there was no summer in Boston in 1820.

Anyway, full disclosure requires me to reveal the following:

#1 – My involvement in the oil & gas business began at $2.75 a barrel in 1972.Coal was in 1977.
#2 – I fracked my first well in 1974.
#3 – I drilled more than 100 wells.
#4 – I testified at a Department of Interior hearing on NJ offshore drilling in 1975. My response to the questioner about his resemblance to Mr. Bumble made the local NYC news. And yes, I was good.
#5 – Since I was signing the checks I hired myself to work on drilling and completion rigs and underground continuous miners.
#6 – In addition to being the only students in the West Orange, NJ school system to be expressly forbidden to participate in the “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” scam, my children were allowed, indeed encouraged, to use electricity in a most conspicuous manner. The word profligate could be used. The reason was simple: I produced far, far more energy than I could possibly consume.
#7 – By “decontrolling” the price of oil, the great Reagan drove the price down from $42.50 [March, 1982] to $6.00 [July, 1986] It’s what markets do. That, coupled with his tax cuts, led to what the Wall Street Journal called ‘The 7 Fat Years” of economic expansion.
#8 – I “created” more than 400 jobs in the ‘80s by drilling wells or opening coal mines.
#9 – If you don’t like how electricity is made turn off your A/C, jog to work, and eschew plastic.

When I got to Florida in late 1996 I noticed the common thread in the editorial boards of the Sun Sentinel and the Miami Herald. They hated any drilling. Their opposition to drilling in either the Gulf or the Atlantic was visceral, bordering on a hate crime. It was OK to burn gasoline produced from oil produced in the Gulf off the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but not Florida. A bit hypocritical, no? Now that China wants to drill off the coast of Cuba, a place where the EPA and OSHA have no jurisdiction, we may need to expand the US Navy to check insurance certificates.

The weight of the editorial evidence would suggest that both papers secretly worship Ned Lud. Logic would dictate that the omelet of the Internet [and I can never thank Vice President Alpha Gump for talking the time out of his busy schedule of being the bag man for Armand Hammer, Lenin’s last friend, a tobacco farmer, a slum lord, a serial polluter, and the first man to tell us the story of Willie Horton – And is there really no such thing as a bad boy? – and the invention of said Internet, of Project Cellini, of driverless but not fuel less cars, of CVS drive-thrus, of replaceable water filters, of the possibility of 3rd Worlders becoming 2nd or maybe even First Worlders, requires that many eggs be cracked.

That Colonel Drake ended American whale hunting is one of those turd in the punch bowl “inconvenient truths” that modern American Liberals eclectically ignore. [The previous fact is worthy of some single malt whisky]

Forget Viagra!

There is nothing more aphrodisiacal than smelling oil coming from a well that you drilled. Instant blue-veiner.

Oil is dirty. It is also the thing that makes the dog hunt. It powers civilization.

Pop quiz

What ended the last Ice Age? Why do Stradivarius instruments sound so spectacular?

One answer is Global Warming and the other is a mini Ice Age. You pick’em.




KS



PS – I called George Will’s attention to a simple grammar mistake just after last Thanksgiving. I oh so gently chastised him. I still haven’t heard from him. Do you think I will?


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