Yes, I know they don't seem to go together, but that's the hat I wear. In an era of global warming and anti-fossil fuel rhetoric, you might think that's impossible, but let's look at the facts.
First, am I really an oilman?
I have a B. S. and M. S. Degree in Geology from the University, and I have worked as an oil and gas exploration geologist from the time I graduated from college to the present. I worked for Exxon in south Texas and Libya for six years, for a small independent oil and gas exploration company for a year, and then formed Gibraltar Energy Company. My recent exploration work has been focused on the Black Warrior Basin, an oil and gas providence in north Mississippi and Alabama, where I have participated in the discovery of 25 oil and gas fields.
We owe the vast improvement in our standard of living to the Industrial Revolution, which has been driven by fossil fuel energy. Abundant energy is the key to a quality life. The coming non-polluting energy wave of the future is 25-plus years away, and instead of seeing the use of fossil fuels decrease in the next ten years, the worldwide demand for fossil fuels will actually increase.
According to several professional analysts, we are entering a super cycle event in the oil and gas end of the energy equation, and predictions of $100/bbl for oil and $5 gasoline are common. Those high energy prices will make the switch from fossil fuels to non-polluting, renewable energy happen quicker, but with a number of countries still building coal fired electrical generating plants, the switch is not going to take place anytime soon.
Keep that in mind when you think of Arkansas's coal fired generating plants, and join the war against coal. Demand those plants switch to clean burning natural gas.
We must keep fossil fuel exploration and production in this country active. If we don't, we will have to depend on OPEC and Russia to supply the world with oil, and set the price. If you think that bunch is going to keep the price of a barrel of oil under $100, you're dreaming. That's one of the reasons I'm still working. It's my professional job, and I'm good at it.
However, no one is completely one sided. We all have other interests, and one of my primary interests has always been protecting and enhancing our environment.
Growing up in south Arkansas and spending untold hours in the woods and on the lakes and streams instilled in me the love and appreciation for our environment.
Early in my career, when we were living in Corpus Christi, Texas, I joined with a group to prevent a large company from discharging polluting chemicals into Corpus Christi Bay. We were successful. When I moved back to El Dorado, I was one of the leaders who organized a large protest against a local company that proposed to incinerate cancer causing PCBs. The protest was so vocal and supported by so many in the community, that Governor Bill Clinton appointed me to fill the Environmental Chair on what is now the Commission of the State Department of Environmental Quality.
Environmentalists in Arkansas were outraged. "An oilman appointed to fill the Environment seat on the commission?"
Yes, I'll admit, it did look like "a fox guarding the henhouse." I met with several environmental leaders and after some tense discussions, I just asked them to give me a chance. I really couldn't blame them because I wasn't a member of any environmental group.
When I attended my first Commission meeting, the Director announced a landfill on the Buffalo River watershed would be on a forthcoming agenda. While I was in college, I hiked along the Buffalo River trails, swam in the river and hunted squirrels along its bank. I love that river, and I don't think I have ever worked as hard to defeat something as I did that permit. Governor Clinton also had a hand in killing the pending permit, but that was just the opening shot of numerous environmental fights that came before the commission.
After that rugged first year, I had convinced the environmental community I was one of them, and later I was named Conservationist of the Year by the Arkansas Wildlife Federation, received a Woody award from the Sierra Club, and two years later was asked to become President of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation.
Yes, I do have some strong environmental credentials, and my columns lean heavily toward environmental issues. I was such a pain in the rear to some business interests in the state that they made sure I wasn't re-appointed.
Awards and membership in an environment organization are good, but what it takes is a day after day commitment. I haven't used straws in a long time, and it has been at least a couple of years since I used a plastic bag. But it's not just the straws and plastic bags. Just think of all the things we buy that are already boxed and later put in bags.
I bought two bags of koi fish food and self-checked at Walmart. The two sturdy bags weighed around three pounds apiece, and when I carried them out waving the self-checkout ticket, I got some funny looks, but carrying six pounds in two sturdy bags isn't a big deal.
Or when you order a burger; they wrap it up, put it in a burger box, and then put it in a plastic sack, enclosing straws, and you just go merrily on your way without even thinking about it. Having an environmental attitude is being ready to turn down over sacking, straws, boxes etc.
While it is important to support the move to cut back emissions, which contribute to global warming, it is equally important to clean up our environmental mess in our own back yard.
Roadside trash is just a daily reminder of how far we have to go to in the Natural State to reach our potential. Clean roads will tell us that we have an attitude that will prevail in all our actions. In other words, clean roadsides will point to discontinuing the use of plastic bags, the push to renewable energy, restoring apex predators, planting downtown trees, having highway mediums with trees. Reaching the clean roadside goal will make Arkansas truly the natural state.
Yes, it won't be government regulations that will make our state improve its environment. It will be the attitude of its people. When you have that attitude and practice it on a day to day basis you will be an environmental friendly individual, and that will give us a truly Natural State.
I believe I have the credentials to wear the oilman's and an environmentalist's hat. Actually, it's more a gasman's hat since I do all my work in the Black Warrior Basin, where natural gas makes up 90% of the hydrocarbons produced, and if my clean-burning natural gas replaces coal in an electrical generating plant, I am part of the solution.
As a little sidebar -- Vertis said she will be buying an electric car when she trades this one in.
Richard Mason is an author and speaker. He can be reached at [email protected].