Category → oil
Holy Cow! What an Announcement!
Today was a big day in Oklahoma City with a big announcement from one of the biggest local companies. There were a lot of smiles around town with this announcement. This morning Devon Energy presented their proposal to build a new corporate headquarters here in Oklahoma City. This new building will be 54 floors at 925 feet tall easily making this the tallest building in the state. The predict this project will cost $750 million and begin construction late 2009 and be complete in 2012. This was big news for OKC and with the addition of the new NBA teams arrival it is even bigger. I am hopeful this project will be completed on time as the new I-40 relocation project is also forecasted to be completer in 2012. Devon Energy is 221st on the Fortune 500 companies according to Forbes.com. Of course the authorities at the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA) gave unanimous approval for the project.
Below you can see a model drawing of the height and design.
As you can see from the image above this is a very large development and will certainly change the appearance of Oklahoma City from every direction. The image below shows a scale model that was revealed at the meeting this morning. I must say that I am pretty excited about this.
With this building reaching 925 feet tall, it will be about four feet taller than the Bank of America building in Dallas, Texas. I have already heard some skepticism that this project will never happen and I can understand the sentiment except this time with fuel prices between $3.00 and $4.00 per gallon, this company can afford this easily. I read a report that they made $5.2 billion profit this first quarter of the year. This project is less that $1 billion.
Ask For What You Want
I ran across a story on Yahoo where nations are asking oil producers to increase production to ease the pain people are experiencing. I think this is the wrong approach because it is not more oil production that is needed, it is lower prices. They, (media) have still swallowed the argument that this is a supply and demand issue. They think that increasing production would lower the price for gas and they could not be further from the truth. I guess if you repeat the same story over and over and over again, it becomes their reality.
The truth is, cue the drum rolling, the oil producers want the price higher and that is what is driving the price up. Supply and demand is not even a factor because if this were to be the case, gas consumption would have to have increased 300%+ over the last five years. I do not believe that for a minute and if you have any brains you would not either. They started out saying this refinery or that refinery had caught fire, or OPEC raised the price, or a hurricane hit New Orleans. It did not take long before they realized there would be no revolt, no government action taken against them. They found out that they could raise the price 300 to 400 percent with no consequences so now they make no excuses except to say that it is a supply and demand issue.
I am on record as being conservative, not only socially but fiscally as well. This puts me into a position of not advocating government getting involved in private business because it is usually to the detriment of the business. The government almost always makes things worse when they get involved. I do still agree with this to some degree but I do not think the government should be completely hands off at all costs. In this case, the oil companies single handedly are destroying the economy of our entire nation. You can blame things on Iraq if you want to but it is small change to the price this country is having to pay thanks to the energy industry. Virtually every industry in America depends on fuel and they are all being over charged by more than 100% mark up on their vital resource. Every industry must raise their prices to compensate for this gouging they are receiving.
The bottom line is the millions of Americans are being burdened by every aspect of their lives costing them more while their pay stays relatively the same. Every bit, and I mean 100% of this blame goes to the energy industry. I do believe they should be held accountable for gouging our country with such a vital resource. The reason that we have seen no price for them to pay is because both Democrats and Republicans are catering to them. The Democrats are just as guilty because they are beholden to the radical environmentalists. The environmentalists have swallowed the whole pill on this global warming fabrication so they can blame our country for destroying the environment. They think that higher prices will mean less fuel consumption and therefore less destruction of the environment.
They cannot admit that they want higher prices because they want to stay in office but ultimately they support it whole heartedly. They put obstacles in the way of drilling for oil in our own country because of the environmentalists. This is not really a factor though because as we have already established supply and demand is not the issue. There never has been a fuel shortage and the increased prices have been calculated from the very start. It is my opinion that if you want true and objective information, you will not find it on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and worst of all the Associated Press (AP). It is my opinion that they have made a science out of telling half truths, and only telling one side of the story that supports their agenda. It is unfortunate that all of these individual groups having completely separate agendas all end up with the same end result. You and I pay 300% more to get to work.
This saddens me because being from Oklahoma City, we depend on the oil and natural gas industry for employment. Some of our largest private corporations here are oil and natural gas producers. While all of this is just my opinion and I have no facts to back any of it up, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: fuel, gas, price, economy, Democrat, Republican, gouge
We Have a New Noisy Neighbor
In recent days we have begun to hear a steady engine running 24 hours a day. Occasionally we hear some banging and scraping sounds. I can hear this noise in my own bedroom at night so it is a good thing that I sleep with a fan for noise. I am not opposed to drilling for oil in fact it is part of our local economy. I do wish that these oil wells would equate to some reasonable prices though. This picture was taken from the end of my street here in Del City, Oklahoma. If you are unfamiliar with Del City, it is actually part of the Oklahoma City metro area on the Southeast side. This is only 1 and a half miles West of Tinker Air Force Base (AFB). Recently signs had appeared over there signifying new businesses coming and I noticed a bull dozer moving dirt. Then I noticed a concrete slab going in that eventually had large green tanks on them. I drove over there to see what was going on and was met with a security guard telling me that it was private property and that I would have to leave.
Then one day I came home from work and saw this huge 100+ foot tall oil drilling derrick. If you look behind, you can see the power poles only come up to the bottom of the platform and those power lines are in the Hartsdel neighborhood. This is one of three new oil wells that have sprung up in our neighborhood over the last year. I guess oil is still King in Oklahoma. I will admit though that it creates a different atmosphere in our neighborhood now with that engine running all the time. The last oil well that he had drilled stayed there for a couple years.
Del City is sort of a military town of about 25,000 that was constructed in the 1940’s and 1950’s to support Tinker (AFB). It has become run down at places over the years and it is my hope that some of these oil wells may bring some money to the city to help with some repairs. In 1999 there was an F-5 tornado that came through Del City and the Eastern metro destroying thousands of homes. In a sense, this tornado has actually created growth in this area with all sorts of new development. Del City is completely surrounded by Tinker AFB, Oklahoma City, and MIdwest City leaving no room for growth. With the destruction of the tornado, a lot of the older businesses were destroyed and new businesses and hotels have replaced them. I am not at all sure if our city will receive a dime from these oil wells but we can only hope. This oil well will not likely result is a decrease of oil prices by even a penny but hopefully the added noise will help in other areas possibly some tax dollars to the city.