A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
“Shoutout to ATM fees for making me buy my own money” (3/27)
“Thank you, ATM fees, for allowing me to buy my own money” (3/27)
“Anyone else boil the kettle twice? Just in case the boiling water has gone cold…” (3/27)
“Shout out to ATM fees for making me buy my own money” (3/27)
20-20-20 Rule (for eyes) (3/27)
More new entries...

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z


Entry from June 15, 2008
Drinking Straw Effect (oil drilling term)

The “drinking straw effect” in oil drilling can occur, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico, where American and Mexican companies both drill. If someone has an extra long “drinking straw,” that could suck up all the oil in the area—even the oil within another country’s territory.
   
The term “drinking straw effect” is similar to the “I drink your milkshake!” line given by the fictional oilman in the movie There Will Be Blood (2007). “Drinking straw effect” appeared in a widely-reproduced story by Marla Dickerson in the June 5, 2008 Los Angeles (CA) Times.
   
   
Wikipedia: There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood is an Academy Award-winning 2007 film directed, written and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! (1927). It tells the story of a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for power during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. Shooting began in mid-May 2006 in New Mexico and Marfa, Texas, with principal photography wrapping August 24, 2006. The first public screening was on September 29, 2007, at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The film was released on December 26, 2007, in New York and Los Angeles, and then opened in a limited number of theaters in selected markets. It opened in wide release January 25, 2008.
(...)
The line in the final scene, “I drink your milkshake!”, is paraphrased from a quote by New Mexico Senator Albert Fall speaking before a Congressional investigation into the 1920s oil-related Teapot Dome scandal. Anderson was enamored of the use of the term “milkshake” to explain the complicated technical process of oil drainage to senators.
   
RigZone
Mexico Energy Minister Hopes to See Pemex Form Deepwater JVs
by Peter Millard     Dow Jones Newswires     Thursday, February 14, 2008
Mexico’s energy minister said Thursday she hopes an upcoming reform will allow the state oil company to form alliances to develop reserves in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
 
In the U.S., oil firms are already drilling a few miles from the U.S.-Mexico maritime border in 9,000 feet of water, and Mexico risks watching oil seep into wells on the U.S. side.
 
“We’re looking for (Petroleos Mexicanos) to have the flexibility to form associations like all the companies in the world, to be able to explore and produce in highly difficult areas, such as deepwater,” Energy Minister Giorgina Kessel said during a Thursday television interview.
 
She said Pemex, as the state oil firm is known, needs to act fast to develop oil fields that overlap the border, where production on the U.S. side is set to begin in two years.
 
“We currently have evidence that there are shared reserves between the U.S. and Mexico,” she said. “In two years the ‘straw effect’ could happen, and we could be losing pressure in our reservoirs.”
   
Los Angeles (CA) Times
Border battle brews over Mexico’s undersea oil
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2008
U.S. GULF OF MEXICO—Eight miles north of the maritime border with Mexico, in waters a mile and a half deep, Shell Oil Co. is constructing the most ambitious offshore oil platform ever attempted in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
As tall as the Eiffel Tower, the floating production facility will be anchored to the ocean floor by moorings spanning an area the size of downtown Houston. Slated to begin operating late next year, this leviathan known as Perdido (or Lost) will cost billions and be capable of pumping 100,000 barrels of crude a day.
 
But Perdido’s most-notable achievement may be to compel Mexico to loosen its 70-year government monopoly on the petroleum sector, thanks to a phenomenon Mexicans have dubbed the “drinking straw effect.”
 
Mexicans fear that companies drilling in U.S. waters close to the border will suck Mexican crude into their wells. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis’ fictional oilman in “There Will Be Blood” likened the concept to siphoning a rival’s milkshake.
 
“When they take petroleum from the American side, our petroleum is going to migrate,” Sen. Francisco Labastida Ochoa, head of the Mexican Senate’s Energy Committee, told the newspaper Milenio recently.

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Sunday, June 15, 2008 • Permalink


Commenting is not available in this channel entry.