Statoil and The Tropic of Cancer
by Randy Naylor, Norway Stavanger Jan. 24, 2013
The Tropic of Cancer stretches across the vast Sahara Sand Sea Desert encompassing
8 African countries. Among these countries are Egypt, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Chad
Western Sahara, Libya and Algeria.
My task as an artiat (painter) is through allegory, metaphor, paint a picture of a
condition, a perception that might shed light on an event. Here in our Stavanger studio
Statoil looms big today. How has Statoil entraped itself in the Tropic of Cancer, In
Amenas.
Would not any CEO, before going in there anyway,not ponder being lost in this
endless sand sea, where one is more bound to hallucinate, dodge black scorpions and
perhaps read Saint Exuperys Wind,Sand and Stars. His chronical from flying and
disappearing in this vast endless space. Then again there is another French
Connection , INSEAD, where Helge Lund received is illustrious MBA. The boys of
Fountainbleau are our new masters of the universe and under his leadership Statoil
has become a finance/invest company wrapped in Oil and Gas jeans. Statoil buys and
sells assets, asset management. It is about numbers and brands. Numbers first, brands
second and in their due diligence , environmental ethics, totalitarian partners and
indigenous cultures do not count in a linear MBA business plan.
So you buy into the Tropic of Cancer Zone. In Amenas, riding a camel with BP and
DeepWater Horizon and a post-colonial French Algerian traumatized government. Let
us not forget that the 8 year French occupation and the French invention of
”counterterrorism operations,” and the date is 1962. Yet here we are today, counter
terrorism operations 2013. As a painter, from Hallucination, to Surrealism to Reality!
Actually we have never left any of these places, these wars, this hallucination: that we
are invincible, that we can plunder the resources of the earth at our convenience, that
our means pollute and malfeasance. None of my Harvard or INSEAD MBA friends
are schooled in ethics, schooled in Eisenhowers Militaty Industrail Complex or are
they occupied by climate change of their own making.
The difference now in this painting is that we have reached a threshold. The edge of
the canvas. Before there were clear routes to governments in which one could twist or
coup d-etat CIA style. In Amenas, out of that sand storm a new ”enemy” appeared,
invisible, not attached to any government, not top down, an al-Qaeda fractal that the
Tropic produced and now viral. And it is a Big Game Changer because now nothing
is safe or what is not safe is our Installations. Our Life Style.
A mother ship can simply appear out of the North Sea waves, launch a few motor
boats, pirates of Somalia style and take over any one of the hundred platforms that are
unguarded. In Amenas becomes In North Sea, surprise!. And there are not enough
BlackWater or Striling Groups to cover these loop holes. Helge Lund has been forced
to change out his Hugo Boss suit to a camelflauge out fit of a 4 star general, from
BOP to a BUP ( Blow Up Preventer).
The Real Game Changer here is that we have to change our Life Style. Helge
Lund and his MBA have to begin investment in Sustainable goods and services.
That we are not sitting ducks triggering and attracing Malice. The 21st century
paradigm shift is the recognition that we have entered a post industrial canvas, the
new painting is to clean up out act. The Clean up Act begins with recognizing that
these things are evident: We cannot be dependent upon fosssil fuels to carry us into
the 21st century. These carbon incentive by products have polluted our atmosphere,
poisioned our food chain, corrupted our education system, dergraded our public health
system; waged countless wars in the Middle East and soon Asia.
So!
Please StatOil MBA, lead us into the Sustainable future and not the addict fossil
fueled past. (In) Amen(as)
Henry Miller, ” I wrote Tropic of Cancer because to me the cancer symbolizes the
disease of (Western) civilization, the end point of the wrong path, the necessity to
change radically, to start completely over from scratch.”
Randy Naylor