Route 101 – Thunder Part 6 of 9

Flotsam

The next D-Shift to set up shop was at the south end literally just a couple of yards from the side of the Road, it was initially stationary like the 'Sweeper'.  Remember Billy the bus driver well he wasn't always a bus driver when he was younger he was an up and coming actor.  Set on the gravy train for life until he was caught with the  director's wife of the film he was in, in a very public incident with a recently printed giant banana.  It basically put his career in the toilet, so he chose anonymity as a school bus driver and became well known in the local bars as 'Only-if' a man of many regrets apparently the incident with the director's wife was just the tip of iceberg when he got drunk which was pretty every night he would bang on saying over and over again only if he done it differently he would be so rich not stuck out here in the sticks.  Billy did however have one redeeming feature he took care of his Mum and the locals knew this so they always made sure someone drove him home if he was too drunk to drive.

It was on one of these nights that Howard James one of Billy's friends was driving him home, they had literally just turned onto the Road when Billy said he needed to take a leak.  Howard stopped the truck and let Billy out who wandered in a less than straight line off the edge of the Road.  Ten minutes later Howard was still waiting for Billy to return, he grabbed a torch and walked off in the general direction Billy went in.  I've met Howard and he said to me it was pitch black out that night even with his flashlight he couldn't see a lot.  He spent about half an hour looking for Billy until he tripped over Billy's body lying face up, he was alive but with an odd calmness about him that Howard had never seen in Billy's eyes before.  He couldn't work out what Billy was looking at until he looked up and for a moment he couldn't drag his eyes away from the spectacle above him.  Unlike Billy Howard was not a man many regrets so he was not drawn into what he saw above him, he knew it must be another D-Shift probably something to do with time he supposed.  He dragged Billy's body back to Road and back into the truck, fifteen minutes went by before Billy blinked his eyes and asked if he had beer in the truck and that he just had a really odd dream.  Howard gave him a light beer then drove Billy home and didn't mention anything to Billy about what he saw.  In hindsight Howard regretted that particularly decision although he never went back to what became known as the Oracle of Madness.

Unlike other D-Shifts known at the time this particularly one was spherical in nature hovering some twenty feet above the ground and was approximately twenty feet in diameter.  To get a proper look at you really needed to lie under it although that wasn't always easy because it tended to wander across the land, at first it was thought that its route was random but when it was plotted it always took the same route across the plain and always ended up where it begun.  It did however make stops during its journey across the plain and took exactly nine hours from beginning to end.  The land that it traveled across was owned by a local entrepreneur called Jake 'River' Hook who instantly saw the D-Shift's money making potential and despite many attempts by the government boys was unable to stop him from raking in a fair bit of cash on the tourist ride he called River Futures.  The government boys did managed to force some health and safety regulations into Hook's operation but it didn't stop several people losing their minds to the Oracle including Only-if Billy before the government boys shutdown Hook down permanently.  Hook himself disappeared shortly after the shutdown he was found lying face up on the Oracle's route chained to ground, dead from exposure.  It was written off as a revenge killing however not enough evidence was ever found to point the finger at a viable suspect.

What you saw when you looked into the Oracle according those big scientists from the City was all your possible futures based upon your past decisions made differently.  The only problem is that you are effectively staring into an infinite number of realities all at once though according the scientists it appeared to affect people differently.  Not everyone looking into it went mad which according to the government boys was why it took so long to shut Hook down.  With Hook gone with no heir apparent the government took over and installed forty foot high fences around the Oracle's route and a daily security patrol.  The same D.S. Agent that visited the 'Sweeper' on a monthly basis also monitored the Oracle.

A Crude Future

Recently I have been looking into what causes the changes in the cost Petrol/Gas, which is a product of oil.  Oil is a commodity, commodities are raw materials or primary agricultural products that can be bought and sold basically stuff that comes out of the ground or grown like:

• Corn
• Coffee beans
• Copper
• Gold

The price of oil sits upon a wobbly tripod (simplified):

Supply & Demand

High demand decreased supply will raise the price and the inverse will drop the price.

Speculators (futures market)

If enough buyers speculate that the price will rise then the suppliers will hold back until it rises in order to sell at a high price.  There have been a number of regulations put in the place since the 1990’s to stop this from spiraling out of control however Speculators can still affect the price.  And according to some 60% of the oil market is pure speculation and they could be right since any money market is effectively based upon a fantasy of potential profits.

Geopolitical Nature of the Economy

If a large country is in recession this means less manufacturing is going on, less jobs,  less people driving buying petrol/gas and less oil produced goods required by said country.  This affects their demand for oil products and we are back to supply and demand.

OPEC controls about 40% of the oil supply in the world which is based mostly in middle eastern countries which over years have been stricken with war.  In 1973 an oil embargo was placed against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the US for their involvement with the Yom Kippur War.  The price oil rose from $3 per barrel to $12 globally by end of the embargo in 1974

Natural disasters also affect the price normally making it rise.

The Industry

The oil industry is split into three categories: Upstream, midstream and downstream (midstream is considered to be part of the downstream)

Upstream

This covers all oil exploration, development and production of crude oil or natural gas.

Downstream and Midstream

This covers oil tankers, refiners, retailers and consumers

All three of these streams are contributing factors to the price.

United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) – North Sea Oil
 
From the year 2000 UKCS has been in decline compared to ten years after 1966, between 2000 and 2008 there has been a 90% drop in new oil discoveries in the North Sea.  According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change who are responsible for UKCS over 50% over the North Sea oil reserve has been extracted in the last forty years, in theory there is up to 25 billion barrels are left.

As of 2013 the UK consumes more oil products than it produces which means it has become a net importer to balance its demand.  Offshore conditions make the UK a high-cost producer of oil however the UK exports oil-related goods and services that are worth more than $40 billion a year.

The cost of Brent Crude (which comes from the North Sea fields) is a major benchmark for the international oil market however its price has had a widening divergence from those of the other markets.  Lots of theories have been put forward for this and most of those appear in that wobbly tripod at the top of the page.

The Upshot

A butterfly flaps its wings in Japan and the cost of oil makes up its own damn chaotic mind.