I talked to one of my little buddies tonight over cervezas. Guy is a top hand on off-shore support boats, the ones that make drilling platforms work. Work is drying up. Rigs are moving to other continents. Permits are not being let. All of the preceding is shallow-water, not deep stuff like what blew up last year and killed all the stupid pelicans.

THE single most frightening thing he told me tonight was that nobody he’s talked to, and he knows a lot of people after several decades in the industry…NOBODY has projected work for 2011. Nobody.

If you know anything about the oil industry, then the fact that not one single oilman is projecting off-shore work for the remaining 10 months of this year of our Lord, 2011, should frighten the ever-loving FUCK out of you.

Lookie here…I’ve never met a more optimistic breed of man than the oilman. Not even the nerds who made the 2001 dot.com bust into the globe-rocking meltdown that it was, were as optimistic as the oilmen I’ve known for well on 40 years of listening to the grown-ups. If they are projecting NOTHING, well, hell, the game is up.

That kind of talk has me extremely fretful. I’m just a hayseed, but even I know this entire country can’t live off of Facebook ad sales and solar panel installations…ain’t gonna happen.