Update
August 3, 2012: Fears of guar shortage overblown; not a problem.
June 6, 2012: Halliburton warns on 2Q12; margins will be hurt by higher cost of guar gum. Link to Rigzone.
January 18, 2012: funny how things work out. I posted the note below a couple days ago, really not expecting to update it so quickly. One of the "things" I noted below was the urban myth about drug-containing coffins coming back from the Vietnam War -- and then suggesting stranger things have happened.
Today, taking up almost the entire front page of the Boston Globe is the story of the Massachusetts-prison-escapee-turned-Liberian-president Charles Taylor. It turns out that the "urban legend" that Chuck was working for the CIA (or similar agencies) wasn't all that far-fetched.
Original Post
Link here. Data points:
- Fracking uses a lot of guar gum.
- Fracking has boosted the price of guar gum from 50 cents to $3.00/pound.
- Guar gum is used throughout the food industry; particularly notably, the ice cream industry.
- Guar gum comes from drone-infested Pakistan and non-drone-infested India.
- The EPA will re-define guar gum as "diesel."
That fifth data point was a joke. I made that up about the EPA redefining guar gum as "diesel" although I don't put it past them.
Two comments:
a) Now I know what the US and the Taliban are fighting over: gum.
b) This reminds me, in a very peculiar way, of the movie, American Gangster, which continues to haunt me and will haunt me for a very long time.
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As long as I mentioned American Gangster, I might as well cross over into the dark side. I don't recommend anyone read below the asterisks. This has nothing to do with the Bakken. It's simply for my archives. I don't recommend anyone reading any farther (further?) because it can't possibly make sense to anyone other than to me, connecting dots that reside somewhere in my paleomammalian brain.
[During the day, my mind does these things to me; after midnight it's something entirely different.]
I am reading Caroline Alexander's book on the Trojan War. She references WWI and the Vietnam war (I haven't finished the book yet, so I don't know if she references the "wars" in Iraq, but she might as well).
The movie left me with haunting visions of heroin-filled coffins coming back from Vietnam, an urban myth but not far-fetched. The fog of war. Cynical NCOs. Clever NCOs. Opportunistic NCOs.
And maybe not an urban myth. It's easy to say "not possible." But it's harder to answer, "then how."
The Trojan War was ten (10) years long, Homer says. (The Iliad covers but two-weeks of that war.)
The Vietnam war was a ten-year war for the US (~ 1964 - 1975) and a 20-year war for the Vietnamese (~1955 - 1975). The Iraq war(s), certainly, as long. I can't remember if it was Caroline that pointed it out, or someone else: take any 100-year period in the last 5,000 years and one will discover that a major war was occurring somewhere on earth in 94 of those 100 years.
Ten years is a long time for lifers to get cynical. A lot of time for thinking. It's the kind of story the government would quickly label an urban myth.
[Well, this is interesting. I'm on the second floor of the Starbucks overlooking Harvard Square. Moments ago a black-and-white drove up on the brick-laid pedestrian/kiosk/subway adit. Car running. Not blocking, but certainly impeding the entrance/exit to the subway. Now a "transit policeman" with coffee cup in hand, having pulled up in his blue-and-white, is now approaching the former. Well, whatever it was, it's over. The black-and-white has driven off; the transit policeman has gone below. With coffee cup in hand.]
And so it goes.
The paleomammalian brain is filled with more trivia and emotion, only to be stomped by the neopallium. The blue-and-white is still there.
Applying occam's razor, it was an inter agency donut shop scouting or recon mission.
ReplyDeleteI have to laugh. That was my first thought when I saw the transit policeman get out with his cup of coffee. At the bottom of the escalator/steps that goes down to the buses/subway, there is a Dunkin' Donut shop. I kid you not.
DeleteI was hoping no one read below the asterisks, but your comment made it all worthwhile.
Hmm! Maybe that is why McDonald's raised the price of their soft-serve cones which contain Guar gum!
ReplyDeleteAn alternative is Xanthan gum which can be synthetically manufactured instead of grown like the Guar bean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthan_gum (I don't know how easy Xanthan is to "degel).
In the oil industry, xanthan gum is used in large quantities, usually to thicken drilling mud. These fluids serve to carry the solids cut by the drilling bit back to the surface. Xanthan gum provides great "low end" rheology. When the circulation stops, the solids still remain suspended in the drilling fluid. The widespread use of horizontal drilling and the demand for good control of drilled solids has led to its expanded use. It has also been added to concrete poured underwater, to increase its viscosity and prevent washout.
Thickening Agents: http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/recipes/recipe166.php
If someone can figure out a good degeller for Xanthan gum North Dakota might have a dandy marker for it's sugar beets! Xanthan gum can use sugar/sucrose as a base ingredient! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthan_gum
ReplyDeleteIt is produced by the fermentation of glucose, sucrose, or lactose by the Xanthomonas campestris bacterium. After a fermentation period, the polysaccharide is precipitated from a growth medium with isopropyl alcohol, dried, and ground into a fine powder. Later, it is added to a liquid medium to form the gum.[3]