![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/CIMG2782.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>(photo credit: Dmitriy Pritykin)<\/p>\nThey see this, a grid of the entire gulf representing regions available for lease (click to enlarge):<\/p>\n
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):<\/p>\n 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<\/a> in the Gulf:<\/p>\n I offer this only as an illustration of the degree to which the Gulf has been commodified.\u00a0 The Gulf is big, big, big business:<\/p>\n While most people look at the Gulf of Mexico and see seafood and beaches, oil executives see the Gulf differently.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[227,702,2123],"class_list":["post-24565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commodification","tag-energy","tag-environmentnature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24565"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60078,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24565\/revisions\/60078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/a>(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/a>(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/a>(source<\/a>)<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"