Crude shock for BP: US field may be shut months - Business - Business

Crude shock for BP: US field may be shut months - Business - Business: BP SAID it had discovered corrosion so severe at the huge Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska that it would have to replace 26 kilometres of pipeline.

Someone please explain to me why BP went 14 years without cleaning the system in place in Alaska? Did they not think that the Alaskan winters and the simple effects of time and moving fluids might have an effect on their hardware? Who hired the people behind the decision(s) to just let the pipeline sit unattended, and why do they still have jobs? Or do they?

One can only hope they're not just getting a harsh talking-to by their bosses.

Is anyone still convinced that oil might not be such a reliable resource anymore?

WSJ.com - ADM Chooses An Energy-Savvy Outsider As Its New CEO

WSJ.com - ADM Chooses An Energy-Savvy Outsider As Its New CEO: "ADM Chooses
An Energy-Savvy Outsider
As Its New CEO
By SCOTT KILMAN and JOANN S. LUBLIN
April 28, 2006; Page B1

DECATUR, Ill. -- Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., placing a big bet on the business of turning farm crops into fuel and chemicals, shattered company tradition by appointing a woman and energy-savvy outsider as its new CEO.
[Patricia Woertz]

After a seven-month search, directors of the grain-processing giant here named 53-year-old Patricia A. Woertz, a former executive vice president at Chevron Corp., as chief executive officer, president and a director. She succeeds G. Allen Andreas, 62, who will remain chairman.

The move makes ADM, a commodity powerhouse with about $36 billion in revenue in its latest fiscal year, the largest publicly traded U.S. company headed by a woman. It also ends the lock of the storied Andreas family on the CEO post at ADM. That lock stretches back to 1970, when Mr. Andreas's uncle began turning an obscure soybean crusher into a commodity empire that moves crops and food ingredients across hemispheres."

This is huge. As in, enormous. ADM is a monster (meaning really, really, really BIG) and if they're putting an energy person in charge of their crop-producing concern, it bodes well for the alternative fuel scene.

Think about it -- someone who knows how to turn raw materials into fuel, is taking over a company that consolidates tons and tons of raw material in the form of crops... just at a time when this country is desperately in need of alternative energy sources.

"In picking Ms. Woertz, who has done business in such far-flung places as Kazakhstan and Venezuela, ADM is luring someone who knows how to turn a raw commodity into hundreds of products and can talk about it with Wall Street analysts as well as foreign dignitaries. ADM, which does business in 60 countries, generates nearly half of its sales outside the U.S. and is involved in everything from crushing soybeans in China to processing cocoa beans in Africa."

Seems like it could be a match made in heaven. I'll be watching to see what happens.

Yes, the virtual book tour creators guide is out there...

Just as I was hitting the ground running, life intervened, and I ended up several states away with a family emergency. It did not turn out as we hoped. I'll not say more than that, only that I'm just now getting back to "business as usual"... getting my virtual book tour creation podcast out there for folks who are curious about what it means, and how to go about creating one.

Life is still good. But it's a far sight less heady than it was a month and a half ago...

Listening to Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour Even as I Write This...

Life is good. I got my Virtual Book Tour Creator's Guide ("Podcasting Your Virtual Book Tour") squared away over the weekend, developed what I think is a very cool cover for the book, and got my material posted to Lulu.com -- I still need to proof it, but the project is just about ready to go out to the world. Woo hoo!

I've been feeling guilty for neglecting my "Fuel" edits, but I just had to sort out the VBT creator's guide before I could do anything else. I mean, for heavensake, I just needed to plug in the screen captures! Now that's done. {sigh}

That means I can focus on my "Fuel" edits -- more changes have come from my editor, so I'll need to tend to them. Still on-track for March publication (later this month). All things considered, there aren't *that* many changes to make, so I'm very encouraged.

I'm presently listening to the second reading of the book tour, to proof it and make sure I didn't flub up anywhere. So far, so good. I've had a couple of false starts to listening - I'd get 20 minutes into it, then get called away... listen to the first 20 minutes again, and get called away... etc. So, I fired up the laptop in the car on my way home, and listened as I drove. So far, so good. Total time is 47:18, and I'm now at minute 30:05. Woo hoo indeed.

I'm getting pretty psyched about this book getting out there. Listening to my podcast again, I'm reminded again why, oh why, we just love England. The memories are still fresh in my mind, even five years later, and we're looking forward to going back. Soon.

Listening to the story again, really gives me a different perspective. I think there is something to the oral history "thing". Hearing words read aloud gives them a different feel, a different sense. Part of me is reluctant to put my voice into people's heads -- I listened to Jeanette Winterson reading a section of "The Powerbook", and the feel of it was entirely different than what I'd imagined, which was a bummer, and it sorta-kinda ruined that book for me. But I think I'm doing the work justice, and anyway, it's up to others, if they want to hear me read the work or not, so I can't sweat it. This is a virtual book tour, after all. People tune in *because* they want to hear the material read aloud.

We're going back to Cornwall!!!!

Woo hoo! We're going back to Cornwall! Laney's been reading "Fuel" and we both decided that we just have to go this year for the two weeks we've been promising ourselves. For years, we swore we'd spend more time there, but we never did. I always had to work. What a drag.

So, the other night, we just bit the bullet, brought out the credit card, and signed up for two weeks in Mullion!!! Ain't no stoppin' us now. And our friends in Mullion remembered us and penned a note that they're glad we're coming back.

So are we!

And in honor of the coming occasion, I'm eating yogurt -- Brown Cow "cream top" yogurt is the closest thing to clotted cream I can find. It's really quite good. Heavenly, in fact. And it reminds me of Cornwall, which is a good thing. A very good thing, indeed.

Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour ready soon!

In the final stages of producing Reading #2 of the Fuel Virtual Book Tour podcast. I've got the whole thing put together, got the levels adjusted, and have exported it to MP3. Now I just need to give it one final listen, to make sure it sounds right, and out it goes to the rest of the world.

Whew!

If only they'd had Greasecars...

Thinking back on the fuel protests and crisis in 2000, I'm struck by the irony of an entire country that's known for its fried food -- fish and chips -- being dependent on foreign oil, when we have the technology to run our vehicles on filtered, used grease/fat. There's a company in Florence, MA, called Greasecar that sells conversion kits for diesel engines, so that just about anyone with a mechanically injected diesel engine can run their vehicle on straight vegetable oil -- even re-used cooking grease/fat.

You'll get about the same mileage from using grease for fuel, plus the engine runs cleaner, and you don't end up a slave to foreign oil. Of course, you'll need a smidge of diesel to start your car on cold mornings (the oil gels at cold temperatures like we have in New England), but once you get going, you can drive the same as you would with diesel.

The implications of this are incredibly dramatic, especially if you're sensitive to the hazards (both domestic and international) of our reliance on foreign oil. There are so many, many reasons to convert to SVO (straight vegetable oil), I can't even begin to say.

Check out their site and seriously consider this, folks. It's time. We have the technology. We can do this better!

Book Tour Reading #2 Now in Production

Have gotten started on Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour. Just landed in England, located coffee, and endured the agony of a car rental agency with its computers down.

Thinking back, I really was very stubborn about sticking with the rental agency I'd chosen -- I was going to have a British vacation, dammit! No computer glitch was going to keep me down! And eventually, things did come together, but what a long, drawn-out experience!

Anyway, it all worked out... and when I think back, I'm struck by the fact that at Gatwick there was only one British car rental agency. American agencies had moved in and pretty much taken over -- Avis, Hertz... and I think Budget. It seems odd to me, thinking back, that I just couldn't get away from the States, even on the other side of the Atlantic. I suppose it's getting that way pretty much all over the world, what with McDonalds in every port and Nike and whatnot in proliferation.

I remember when I was in Germany, how people complained so bitterly about McDonalds being everywhere, and it was a bummer. But nowadays, I think it's even moreso. The world is a lot smaller now, than it was in 1986 (20 years ago! don't remind me!) and the lack of local color just makes the whole world seem that much smaller. It's getting to the point, where it's tough to find any local color at all, anymore. Even at the smaller places -- perhaps especially at the smaller places, since those places often have inferiority complexes they hope to overcome with ascribing to mass-produced dominant culture commodities. Everybody wants to be somebody, and when the Big Guys (and the United States) are seen as Somebody, and American companies make it really, really easy to consume their products, then everybody has easy access to a whole new identity, compliments of marketing culture.

Ah, well. I suppose it's been this way since time immemorial. People have been cirumnavigating the globe in search of What's Cool and What's From Somewhere Else (often the two are synonymous) for as long as they've been able to hop in a ship and go. Ancient Chinese pottery shards have been found on the coast of Chile. The Merrimack Valley was a destination for miners and ore traders from the British Isles and Phoenicia. And the Silk Road opened up the East to the West aeons ago. So, it should come as no surprise that we continue to do this cross-cultural integration thing.

I just wish we could retain something of the original, now and then. If there is such at thing as "the original"...