Market Farming

[Chris Sawyer <css AT ioa.com>]

Leigh wrote:

> have you ever worked on an oil rig or pipe line?  I have.

I worked for Digicon Alaska in the early eighties. We were searching for
oil in a Navy oil reserve in the area of Point Lay. I can tell you that
the north slope is an unhabitable barren place. If any tourism were to
happen it would destroy the tundra. It is just not possible to travel
over it unless it is frozen solid. Our permits allowed us to use
motorized vehicles only in winter because any ruts that would be made in
summer would never heal but rather turn into huge gullies in a matter of
a few years of run-off. I have seen 50 below zero and the wind blow
without ceasing for days on end. We were paid 12 hours a day whether we
worked or not. All waste, human and paper was incinerated in a blast
furnace fired with diesel fuel. Our camp was on skids and pulled by huge
bulldozers from location to location. I spent hundreds of hours in a
helicopter flying dynamite all over that part of the north slope. We saw
the arctic fox, and polar bears only. I can see no way that drilling for
oil up there is a bad thing except it is so darn remote that it will be
very expensive to get it out.

I also know that we have several compressor facilities for compressing
natural gas and shipping it out in tankers to Tokyo. I was told that
alaska furnishes all the heating fuel for tokyo. I also worked for a
time on the oil producing platform 'King Salmon" in the Cook inlet. My
dad was a geophysicist, and I have been connected in one way or another
to the oil industry for years. I would think drilling in alaska is a
good thing. Our wildlife is important to be sure, but our kids and our
lives are even more important. I object to the way the oil is used. To
fight against another of God's creation is sickening. I would prefer
that we use our oil for creation of more and more Love in this world. I
don't associate actions with results, but motives. If the motives for
drilling for more oil are pure then I think that the drilling with be
'protected' and be clean. If the oil is to be used for 'dirty' motives,
I think the results will match.

A miracle is only that which we don't understand. Our fallacy is
thinking that actions produce results, but there is a missing first
step. It is what we think that produces our actions. Fear and pain
produce actions that have less than perfect results. To let go and let
God is my action. I have no intention of trying to stop anything,
particularly finding and using our natural resources. If you must work
to prevent Alaska development, why not instead get more education and
fight for advancing the methods used, instead of denying the use of our
God given resources.

I was told there is enough oil under Petroleum reserve number four (navy
reserves) to function for almost a hundred years. It stretches from
Point Lay roughly 200 miles east. And like I said earlier, north of the
Brooks range is nothing but tundra. Nothing grows taller than a foot, no
trees, no shrubs.  Only a very few natives have ever lived that far
north. It is not accessible in the summer without extreme damage, and
not the sort of area that any tourist would go to unless they were
desperate to find the last frontier.

My .o2

Chris Sawyer
www. jakesfarm.com