Work in the upstream oil and gas industry has more in common with modern politics than might initially seem to be the case.
Both endeavors must accommodate orientations sharply different from one another.
The word "orientations" here means beliefs, assumptions, and thought patterns that give direction to perceptions, ideas, and judgments-not what people think but rather how they do so.
The approach of Oil & Gas Journal's annual Geophysics Update, which appears in this issue, always reminds this editor of the disparate orientations upstream professionals bring to the subsurface.
Differing orientations
Geophysicists perceive a given earth volume as a network of elastic media. Geologists see the same section of the planet as a framework of rock layers. Engineers study the cubic footage as a dynamic system of pressures, temperatures, and potential fluid flows.
Each orientation is important. Even more so is the eventual blend of geophysical, geological, and engineering assessments-along with findings of other disciplines such as petrophysics-into a representation, suitable for decision-making, of realms not viewable.
Achieving that blend isn't easy. The upstream disciplines measure different qualities of or about the subsurface, with varying precision, and vary in their terminology.
Interdisciplinary communication therefore can be troublesome. Even with integrated teams having long ago become the standard organizational unit for upstream work, communication remains, by most accounts, a work in progress.
Politics, of course, grapples with many more orientations, usually engaged in mortal conflict.
Former US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton highlighted a treacherous orientation at a fund-raising event for her presidential campaign Sept. 9 in New York City: the urge to treat political issues of tests of character.
To be sure, neither Clinton nor her political party monopolizes this framework for political thinking. Republicans, including Donald Trump, her main opponent, have the same habit.
But Clinton might have pushed an increasingly corrosive orientation to its unsavory limits.
"You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables,'" she said, receiving applause. "Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic-you name it."
The offense isn't the name-calling, which is annoying enough and more characteristic of Trump than of Clinton. It's the prejudicial condemnation of people on the basis of nothing more than their opinions, usually misrepresented.
Trump supporters have reasons for their choice in candidates, some sound and defensible and others perhaps less so. The same can be said of Clinton partisans.
Politics is supposed to place reasons to support one candidate in fierce competition with reasons to favor the other.
The contest inevitably encompasses personalities along with ideas and descends to name-calling. That's politics.
Now, though, ideas yield instantly to categorical acrimony-"racist, sexist, homophobic," and so forth. Then acrimony turns vicious: "deplorables."
Clinton partly apologized, saying she regretted aiming her censure at fully half the Trump camp.
But arithmetic isn't the problem; preemptive judgmentalism is. Putting defamation before argument, Clinton betrayed an elitist form of bigotry that spoils too much political discourse nowadays, emanating from everywhere along the political spectrum.
Here's a theory about origins of this degenerate orientation. Social media and the internet provide outlets to any and all opinions. In large and growing numbers, people once consigned to obscurity now vent thoughts in forums open to everyone. And they think exposure means their opinions matter.
Well, not necessarily. Opinions matter only to the extent they're logical, expressed well, and supported by facts. Opinions meeting those standards seldom need name-calling and empty moralizing to attract attention.
A republic oriented to noisy hostility masquerading as discourse now finds itself forced to choose between presidential candidates setting records for popular disapproval. Is this just coincidence?
More civil
The upstream oil and gas industry, of course, is more civil than politics. Geophysicists, geologists, and engineers do not impugn the morals of professionals whose orientations toward the subsurface differ from their own.
At least they don't tweet about it or call one another names on YouTube.
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.
