The Oil Disconnect

It sometimes seems as if Americans live on a separate planet. I don't know if it's because we don't travel enough, and have no idea how the rest of the world lives, or if it is because we are so self-centered that we don't think about anything beyond our immediate needs. Or maybe the thinking of things that concern our own intimate lives is something that all humans share, but sometimes reading about a tragedy in the American press gives us a completely different take on things. Americans are concerned about how much money they are spending to fuel their vehicles. When an oil pipeline burst yesterday in Nigeria, the thought that immediately occurred to the impoverished people of this oil rich nation was to try to gather the oil, not to put in the tanks of cars, they don't own any, but to gather the oil to sell on the black market so that they could feed families. The horrible result of this need for people to survive was that over 200 of them were burned to death.

There were a couple different accounts in the press, this one from the Kallej Times in the UAE.

This is not the first tragedy to hit Nigeria's oil industry that contributes significantly to Opec's collective output and is one of the key oil exporters to the US. It witnessed a similar tragedy back in July 2000 when more than 200 people died in the southern city of Warri. Yet another, bigger disaster struck in 1998 claiming more than 1000 lives. All those disasters, including this week's blaze, had been the consequence of dangerous oil pilferage attempts by desperately impoverished local people who wanted to make a fast buck by selling the petrol on the black market. While this vandalisation of national resources is unacceptable under any circumstances, Nigeria can't deal with the problem without addressing the factors that are driving these desperate men to desperate means.

And this headline from Business Week.

Nigerian Blast Tempers Falling Oil Prices Crude oil futures fell by more than $1 a barrel Friday after the International Energy Agency reduced its 2006 world oil demand forecast. Prices held above $72 a barrel, however, on concerns about nuclear diplomacy between the U.N. and Iran, and on the heels of a pipeline explosion in Nigeria, where violence has curtailed oil output by some half-million barrels per day.

There is something fundamental that Americans don't understand here. All of that neo-liberal crap about globalization being good for third world countries isn't true, the profits don't trickle down to the people, they get sucked up by Nike and Exxon Mobile. Business Week didn't even mention the people who got burned to death. Business Week, The Wall Street Journal all write the same things, they all make these horrible things palatable by telling us that sweatshops are good for the workers in China and Africa, because without that twenty cents per hour, these people would have nothing.

The next time I fill up my tank, I want to remember those folks in Nigeria, and think about where the bulk of my petro dollars are going.

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