Alaska Pipeline

Good Timeing To Fix The Ol'pipes Wouldn't Ya Say! ANOTHER 15 TO 30 CENT HIKE ESTEMATED. 4 BUCKS BY NEXT SUMMER, WATCH! 100 BUCKS A BARREL!

Yeah, seems to be sorta scripted in my opinion. How convenient to happen at such a time, huh!
What's that I'm smellin'..........revolution??!!

Well, if you're a welder, you might be able to make some good money. Take your mukluks, though. Brrrrrrr.

Know what? I'm ambivalent about it. In a way, it'll be good to run gas up that high. It'll change car buying habits and increase two wheeler sales. It'll encourage transfer to alternate fuels and energy sources. In the short term, I fear what it'll do to the economy, though. That directly effects me because it will effect the stock market.

We'll see what happens, I guess. Won't be a lot of long rides for me and it'll effect my racing. I won't be taking many trips, ain't doin' that now, actually, with gas at nearly three bucks down here for plain regular. I'm planning a trip to Waco end of the month to do a little dove hunting with a friend. Hope it holds off the four bucks till that's done. I'm riding up on the Wing, tow the trailer with guns and gear.

It does certainly seem to be just about the worst timing you could think of. If the pipe line is corroded so bad they have to shut it down and replace 16 miles of pipe line, then I have to think it has been going bad for quite some time and they didn't do anything about it until they absolutely had to.

They do all kinds of maintenance and inspections on the these things. I find it difficult to believe they couldn't have done something earlier. With the money they have, they could have simply put in a new line next to the old one while they were still running. Then they could have switched over during a small shut down. Large corporations do that sort of thing all the time.

Out in the plant, I heard it straight from our most idiot engineer's mouth, the plant policy, "RTF" or "run till failure". The stupid thing about that is when the right piece of equipment failed it could cause a release or even could be hazardous to anyone nearby. It, at times, cost 'em fines by the EPA and TNRCC and it almost inevitably cost 'em more to fix in production loss than if it'd been properly shut down for repair. Once stuff starts to age, it's something here, something there going out. It's a stupid policy.

So, I reckon if Formosa Plastics had been running that pipeline, it'd not been shut down till a couple tens of thousands of barrels of oil were on the snow.

Uh..I think that already happened to BP around last April..they're still cleaning it up.

C'mon guys, don't be so hard on the oil production and refining companies.

You KNOW they don't make that much in the way of a profit...especially these days, so lay off...

If I ran MY house that way....I'd be out on the street, yanno????