Decades ago when I covered oil and gas for a Houston daily newspaper, some editor each spring would gas up his vehicle on the way to work and suddenly realize pump prices were higher. He'd enter the newsroom yelling for an expose on the "sudden jump" in gasoline prices.
Unlike OGJ staffers, most newspaper editors' ignorance of the oil industry is exceeded only by their lack of education in economics. Most think Adam Smith was one of the brothers who made and advertised the first cough drops in the US.
A newspaper editor once called for an oil price report, unaware such an article was in that morning's edition. I was assigned to write a duplicate article for the next edition.
Piqued, I called the same number of different sources who responded similarly to my original sources but in slightly different words. Taking the copy of my initial report, I substituted the new names and quotes but left the rest of the text untouched. The angry howl I expected as the copy passed from editor to editor never came, and the repetitive article appeared in next day's paper. What really hurt, however, was no subscribers complained about the duplicate article either.
Pump prices
Former editors who fumed about gasoline prices in the 1990s probably had fits when the S&P GSCI composite commodity index reported the price of gasoline in the US jumped 12% in July—the fourth-largest July price hike in the index's 25-year history and the biggest since 2005. The index for crude prices had gained 17.5% since May, "which is the most since October 2011," officials said.
The Energy Information Administration reported US pump prices for regular gasoline averaged $3.65/gal July 29, 15¢/gal higher than a year ago. However, the average regular retail price year-to-date for 2013 was down about 5¢/gal, or 1%, from the average price over the same period in 2012. "Prices varied greatly by regional market so far in 2013," EIA officials said.
Newspaper editors and the public at large neither know nor care about the simple fundamentals of supply and demand, the high costs of finding and producing oil in remote and difficult locations, lack of transportation facilities, loss of refining capacity, geopolitical tensions, environmental regulations, or other factors that cause oil prices to fluctuate. They simply believe they have a God-given right to an unlimited supply of cheap fuel.
Personal viewpoint
Journally Speaking is intended to give readers insight into the minds and personalities of OGJ staffers. This particular column is more personal than most because it's my last. I officially retired from OGJ a couple of years ago but kept contributing articles under a contract I've chosen not to renew, despite years of fun writing for the best damn trade publication there is.
I've had the great luck to combine the best of two professions—journalism and the oil industry. I grew up in the oil patch—born in the East Texas oil field and spent my teens in the Permian basin where I worked summers hustling geophones on seismic crews. Toiling in the West Texas sun encouraged me to pursue my passion for journalism where I could work sitting inside. From my first byline in the high school newspaper, I've loved the hustle of chasing down facts, bucking deadlines, breaking stories. I started covering the oil industry in 1976, and it has brought me into contact with wonderful people from the rig floor to the board room.
However, two events in July signified how much the oil industry has changed in 37 years. GE Oil & Gas completed its acquisition of Lufkin Industries Inc., and the great independent oil man George P. Mitchell died. Time moves on. Things end. Goodbye.
Sam Fletcher | Senior Writer
I'm third-generation blue-collar oil field worker, born in the great East Texas Field and completed high school in the Permian Basin of West Texas where I spent a couple of summers hustling jugs and loading shot holes on seismic crews. My family was oil field trash back when it was an insult instead of a brag on a bumper sticker. I enlisted in the US Army in 1961-1964 looking for a way out of a life of stoop-labor in the oil patch. I didn't succeed then, but a few years later when they passed a new GI Bill for Vietnam veterans, they backdated it to cover my period of enlistment and finally gave me the means to attend college. I'd wanted a career in journalism since my junior year in high school when I was editor of the school newspaper. I financed my college education with the GI bill, parttime work, and a few scholarships and earned a bachelor's degree and later a master's degree in mass communication at Texas Tech University. I worked some years on Texas daily newspapers and even taught journalism a couple of semesters at a junior college in San Antonio before joining the metropolitan Houston Post in 1973. In 1977 I became the energy reporter for the paper, primarily because I was the only writer who'd ever broke a sweat in sight of an oil rig. I covered the oil patch through its biggest boom in the 1970s, its worst depression in the 1980s, and its subsequent rise from the ashes as the industry reinvented itself yet again. When the Post folded in 1995, I made the switch to oil industry publications. At the start of the new century, I joined the Oil & Gas Journal, long the "Bible" of the oil industry. I've been writing about the oil and gas industry's successes and setbacks for a long time, and I've loved every minute of it.
