On a trip to the west Texas city of Midland last week, my wife and I took in the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum. Full disclosure requires that I let you know the following family history. My mother's father was an oil-field-equipment manufacturer's representative, and he naturally went where people were discovering oil. In 1929 that was the Midland-Odessa-Big Spring area, and my mother was born in Big Spring in that year. So as I owe my existence in an indirect way to the sedimentary deposits of limestone and oil known as the Permian Basin, it's hard for me to be objective. But I know bias when I see it, and the Museum makes no secret of where its interest lies: to convince you of the greatness and world-girdling influence of the oil business.
It's easy to spot the Museum from Interstate 20: just look for the antique wooden derrick, the tapered outline of which has become a permanent symbol of oil production, just as an envelope still symbolizes email long after most communications ceased to involve paper. After browsing among the cable-tool rigs and working pump jacks in the open-air "oil patch," the visitor can go inside, pay twelve bucks (eight for seniors), and sit down to a fifteen-minute video entitled "Mythcrackers."
This slickly-produced show purports to be a quiz program, complete with a young woman emcee whose enthusiasm is equalled by most of the contestants: an Anglo family on the left and a Hispanic family on the right. The contestants field questions such as "Are most gas stations owned by oil companies or OPEC?" A tentative "Yes?" from one contestant prompts a raucous buzzer, followed by the explanation that most gas in the U. S. is sold through convenience stores, and even if an oil company's name appears on the sign, most of the outlets are owned by local franchisees. On the screen a cartoon of your Average American Franchisee Owner shows up, with an arrow pointing to him and a big sign saying "NOT OPEC" just in case you missed the point.
And it goes on from there, taking on one "myth" after another: wind and hydroelectric power could replace oil, fracking puts lots of toxic chemicals in the ground, and so on. Offhand, I don't recall any answer the contestants got right, unless the light eventually dawned and they started giving answers more to the petroleum industry's liking. The way they cracked the toxic-fracking-chemical one was this: Most of what goes into the ground is water, most of what they put in is taken out again, most of what's left is innocuous stuff like guar gum and sodium carbonate (this was accompanied by a benign-looking sketch of ice cream and cakes and other familiar products that use such chemicals), and the tiny little bit of chemicals you might not want to put on your banana sundae stay in the ground, far away from any drinking-water well formations. There now, don't you feel better?
In a museum privately owned and funded by people who got exceedingly rich in an industry which truly is an essential part of modern life, to expect even-handed argumentation taking both sides of an issue into account is downright unreasonable. These people know they are anathema in some circles, and so they're going to make things look as good as they can without outright lying.
But what if you take out a fiction license and construct an entire participatory exhibit around it? Technically, all fiction is lying, but some people—especially children—are unable to distinguish between fiction and fact. And that's what bothered me about the second major theatrical exhibit we tried out. It's called "The Voyage of the PetroTrekker," and the museum's website describes it thus: "As the tactical engineers of a petroleum exploration vessel, guests journey across land, through space, and under the sea to find new sources of petroleum. This immersive theater features interactive touch screens, dramatic lighting, and special effects to place guests at the heart of the action."
The "theater" is a Star-Trek-looking circular command post, with places for you to sit and touch screens when a Captain-Kirk-like guy orders the technicians or engineers to do so. I quickly figured out that the system didn't care if I touched anything or not, so I just watched it.
Somebody spent a ton of money on this thing. After Not-Kirk explains the mission, the screen shows something like a missile-silo lid opening with the Midland skyline in the background. But instead of an ICBM, here comes a thing that looks for all the world like a glorified tuna can: a gussied-up cylinder with a slightly conical top that shoots into the sky and takes off for some tropical clime where oil is suspected of being. Not-Kirk mutters about needing to get there before some vaguely Oriental-sounding rival company beats us to it, and we see scenes of verdant greenery interlaced with rivers, just before the craft hovers and shoots down a laser beam from the sky to drill an exploratory well, and then sends down microbots that look like mechanical roaches with tails to sniff out any oil and report back to the PetroTrekker.
I found myself thinking, "Wait a minute. If I'm eight years old and don't know any better, I may go away thinking this is how we actually explore for oil, not realizing that it is really a billionaire oilman's fever dream of how he wishes he could explore for oil." And what about those people on the ground, hey? Did you check with them before you turned on the laser?
The exit doors slid open and we emerged to see the rest of what is quite a good historical collection of petroleum-business artifacts. But whether the PetroTrekker and Mythcrackers are really encouraging the younger generation to take up the mantle of oil exploration and production, which seems to be the purpose for which they are designed—well, let's just say I have my doubts.
Sources: The Permian Basin Petroleum Museum's website is at https://petroleummuseum.org/.
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