Energy and the Future
So, I thought I would pick up briefly on the natural gas business. One of the things I’m considering is the ultimate resolution of the company. Best estimates for the life of the San Juan Basin range from 30years to 50 years, but sooner or later the gas will be gone. So, what do I do? Do I take out every scrap of hydrocarbon, plug the wells, and we (or our heirs) all slink away. Or do I take a portion of our profits and try to move the company into green energy sources? I’m very interested in this course, and I’m a huge supporter of alternative fuels, but the monies involved seem daunting. To really get in on cutting edge research and technology takes hundreds of millions of dollars, and I literally have widows and orphans who depend upon their quarterly check from Western. So, I can’t risk our capital. On the other hand I hate for the company to just die, and I’d like to throw my support behind renewable, alternative energy.
But since I can’t do R&D I’m left with investing in bigger companies, and again I’m playing with my members money. It’s a question that I don’t, as yet, have an answer for.
Melinda
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 am
Bigger companies are sharks, I can understand your hesitation to throw your money with those. Moroever, the US suck at supporting alternate energies. But could there be a way to work with a company in Europe? Alternate energies do better in some countries here, and we have probably (I’m not a specialist) more medium-sized companies that might benefit from a joint venture.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 am
What about piggybacking on university research? Texas A&M has a technology commercialization office. Make some contacts here and find out what kind of research is being done in alternate energies. I’m sure the answer is “lots”. It’s bound to be cheaper to license the technology than fund it yourself.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:16 am
Now that’s a cool idea. This current crowd in Washington is so anti-intellectual, and certainly anti-science that universities could probably use plenty of help from the private sector. I’m just a little guy, but I’d like to make a difference, and it’s sort of fun being a liberal Democrat in the oil and gas business. And a woman!
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
There’s a TV series in that - how a Democrat woman makes it in the oil business. An anti-Dallas.
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Hemp is the secret solution to the worlds energy crisis. We look to America to lead the world in legalising it as a crop as it is America that prevents the rest of the world in doing so, by refusing to trade with any country that does.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Preston, thank you. I think you just thunk up a way to avoid harming the widows and orphans while attempting to do something sensible and responsible.
How rare!
March 24th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Damn, Gabriele, you’re right. I’m heading out to L.A. today. Maybe I’ll mention that while I’m taking meetings. The producer I’m working with on a movie project is very eager to get into television.
BTW, tell us a bit more about yourself. Where exactly are you living in Germany? My beloved Steppi came from the area around Warendorf. And what are you in Germany. Campbell doesn’t sound like a German name.
March 24th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Lol, no Campbell isn’t German nor my real name (Gabriele is, though). I’m planning to use it as pen name. For one, my German name has an umlaut and I don’t want to see it misspelled half of the time
and second, I want to keep my academic career under my German name separate from my fiction writing. There are some academics who’d look down their uppity little noses if they found out I write *gasp* genre fiction. But since I’m establishing an online presence with blog and website already as many aspiring writers do these days, I decided to do it under my pen name. Keeps that nosy uncle from finding it, too. 
I live in a town called Göttingen more or less in the middle of Germany, most famous for its university. It’s a nice place with lots of old houses though it never played a spectacular role in history. We have a lot of beautiful nature, plus several castles and Mediaeval abbeys (some of them ruins), the remains of a Roman fort, an Iron Age settlement, and other interesting features in less than half an hour driving distance.
Here’s one of the castles. If you go to my blog and scroll the sidebar down to Important Blog Entries - Peregrinationes, you’ll find more pics. I’m also going to take some of Göttingen with my new camera as soon as there are buds on the trees and the world looks less dreary.
March 25th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Okay, Gabriele, you are really interesting. And you’re not a _what_. I meant to type _why_ are you in Germany. Clearly the flu makes me stupid and uncoordinated.
It’s interesting how academia reacts to genre writers. I just stumbled into writing, and managed to avoid all the “creative writing” classes, but apparently there was a man at UNM who used to scorn anyone who sold (which is really strange when you think about it). I guess if you got money for your work you weren’t really an artist, or something.
And yes, people do look down on S.F. and Fantasy, but they truth is we’ve won. Almost all of our entertainment today has fantastic elements whether it’s movies, television, or games.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Melinda, I’m not sure exactly what you would be trying to accomplish with moving the company in a new direction, but may I point you to the Petroleum Recovery Research Center at http://baervan.nmt.edu/ .
Part of their mission statement says:
Industry Service And Outreach
PRRC’s Industry Service and Outreach Group (ISOG) was formed in 1993 to optimize the transfer of new technology to independent producers and to enhance the necessary interaction between New Mexico producers and state regulatory agencies.ISOG’s program goals and activities focus primarily on the needs of the independent producer. Technology transfer is accomplished through workshops, seminars,training sessions, web site tools, and document development on issues of pertinent interest to the oil and gas industry.
Best,
Kathy H.
March 26th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Thank you, Kathy, for this information. The reason to move in a new direction is to keep the company from simply vanishing once the gas runs out. If we have investments in other areas than the current members grandchildren could conceivably keep receiving income from the company long after the gas has played out.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Melinda,
Creative Writing courses seem to be something for the UK/US school system; we don’t have them here. I studied Literature (which is a different animal), History, Scandianavian Culture and Comparative Linguistics, and the PhD I’m mostly not working on is about the image of Charlemagne in Mediaeval Literature. That I have - besides the Roman Empire novels and that Fantasy thingie - an idea for a novel about Charlemagne in my Future Projects files, is my dirty little secret.
Of course, if I wrote polito-socio-philosophical stuff with no plot that gets nomiated for all those prizes where people have to explain their books because the critics got it all wrong, I would be excused.