I remember when spending a week hiking around Sicily in 2000, we were advised not to mention or make any inane jokes about the Mafia. Sicily is a beautiful island where we felt safe and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  Well, I do remember a little eruption from Etna while we were in church on Palm Sunday. And I remember watching in horror as the attendant at a gas station smoked a cigarette while pumping our gas. But otherwise, I felt safe. Still, I learned then that it’s good advice when visiting different places to embrace differences.  Otherwise, you might just as well stay home.  Be an open-minded-eager-to-learn-traveler.  Perhaps keep your thoughts on smoking, automatic weapons and pollution to yourself for the time being.

In West Texas right now, it’s all about the oil companies.

With the development of hydraulic fracturing, oil and natural gas that was once unattainable  beneath the Permian Basin and the Pecos Valley can now be economically delivered to the surface.  Prosperity has returned to the valley which has been depressed since the cotton industry failed some thirty years ago, a result of deregulation.  The whole business fascinates me.  One day, Mother and Gracie and I drove all around Reeves County snapping pictures of it all. 

Most of the pictures speak for themselves.  Some need a little explanation.  For example, every available rental in town and every motel on the interstate is booked with oilfield workers.  Enterprising independent entrepreneurs as well as the oil companies themselves have brought in manufactured structures and set up villages all around town called “man towns” to house workers who work in shifts 24/7 at the rig sites.

Hydraulic fracking requires lots of “hydro” — water.  It is pumped up from the aquifer, stored in huge, white-plastc-lined earthen tanks, sold, and hauled to the drilling sites in trucks.

Today’s modern rigs are portable and temporary.

When the fracturing process is completed, the wells are capped off, a pump is installed, and pipelines are laid.  Depending on whether the product is oil or natural gas, it  may be piped or trucked out or temporarily stored in tanks.

Prior to drilling, another kind of earthen tank is installed next to each well.  These are lined with black plastic and are used to receive the used water, which is no longer clean.  It is left there to evaporate in the hot desert sun.  No one wanted to talk to me about what was done with the residue.  I remembered to be a polite visitor.

Lots of friendly advertisements around:

I was fascinated and I learned as much as I could while I was there.  I am a fossil-fuel user.  I drive a car, albeit a very clean, efficient one.  My house is heated in winter with natural gas.  I can’t throw stones.  I am happy for a community that is once again prospering.  I try not to think about what people are breathing in.  I did notice, interestingly, that gasoline there costs almost exactly what it costs here and you have to pump it  yourself.   Go figure.