While most people look at the Gulf of Mexico and see seafood and beaches, oil executives see the Gulf differently. They see a giant grid containing thousands of squares of possibility, each potentially yielding billions of dollars.
You see this:
(photo credit: Dmitriy Pritykin)
They see this, a grid of the entire gulf representing regions available for lease (click to enlarge):
(source)
This is a close up off the Louisiana coast (green lines and regions are oil pipelines and fields, the pink are the same for gas):
(source)
There are 6,652 leased squares, amounting to 22 percent of the lease-able Gulf (click to enlarge) and approximately 4,000 oil production platforms in the Gulf:
(source)
I offer this only as an illustration of the degree to which the Gulf has been commodified. The Gulf is big, big, big business:
(source)
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 4
Margarita — June 14, 2010
I have pictures showing almost the exact thing in a different context. I did some research on land development in South American and it was a similar story. What people saw were mountains and what the developers saw were grids for potential construction. Latour calls these "immutable mobiles", and I think they acquire added meaning when we are talking about the economization/marketizaion of environmental objects.
Ben Ostrowsky — June 14, 2010
Well, the top image is what "you" see if you've got pale skin and enough money to bring a brand-new, top-of-the-line (at the time) $300 pocket camera to the beach in the middle of the week. Digital photos can reveal more than they show:
http://regex.info/exif.cgi?url=http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2010/06/CIMG2782.jpg
This sort of tool can be handy for learning more about how the images we're fed have been produced.
sherifffruitfly — June 14, 2010
GASP. People use different maps to show different information! Oh the outrage!
ViktoriaMorris — April 27, 2021
Thanks for the interesting post! It's strange for me to say this, but the authorities actually forbade leaving the house unnecessarily. I forgot how great it is to relax on the beach. I'm lucky to have my own pool in my backyard. I have no hassle with this since I have been using the robot to clean the pool. You can check it out by this link here. My parents saw this miracle and were also interested))