Dan's Papers - October 3, 2008 - Gas Finagling To Get That Very Last Drop

A few months ago, an oil tanker in the Black Sea split a seam, sending thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the water and up onto the rocky shore of Port Kavkaz, Russia. Authorities said this accident was caused by the behavior of those billionaires in the oil tank business. The demand for oil is so high that there are not enough tankers around to cart it from place to place. And so, the oil tank owners were taking rusty, old, unsafe oil tankers out of storage and putting them into service. This was one of them, and of course it split a seam.

What seemed more interesting to me about this event, however, was that the townspeople of Kavkaz were soon seen down on the rocks with pails and sponges in a sort of frenzy to clean things up. It was not because of the environment. It was because of their pocketbooks. At $100 a barrel even a squeeze of the sponge into a pail was worth the effort. This was their lucky day.

I was reminded of this event after a few others that I have seen recently. I witnessed a woman at the Water Mill Hess station at one gas pump getting into an argument with a man at another gas pump. Both of them were just finishing up filling their gas tanks. But then the woman did more. Removing the metal nozzle from the tank, she held it high over her head for a moment with one hand while whacking at the hose with the other. Then, holding the hose up high, she put the nozzle back into the tank and got in a few extra drops.

"You're stealing gas," the man said. "That's supposed to be for the next person."

"No, it's not. I paid for it. I get every drop."

"If I wasn't late for where I was going, I'd tell the management about what you're doing. And it's dangerous waving hoses around like that. It could cause a fire."

Nothing more was said. The man left. The woman left. I just stood there, wondering if I should do the same. I decided against it. It was for the next person.

At the Hess service station in Wainscott the next day, I witnessed another tricky maneuver. The man next to me was finishing pumping gas. You could hear the clicking sound of the safety as it shut off. There were repeated clicking sounds. He was trying to get another few drops. Then he took the nozzle out, held it up over his head just as the woman did, put his other arm on the fender above the gas tank and gave the whole car a big shake back and forth. You could hear the gas sloshing around inside. Then he put the nozzle back and pumped another second or two until it clicked again. Then he left.

Again, I just stood there. The logic of this escaped me. It still does. I think the only good that might have come of it was that by a few minutes, he might have increased the time it took before he'd have to put gas in the tank again. But that was it.

Here's more news. Up in the western end of Long Island where there are lots of fast-food restaurants and lots of big metal tanks out back where they put the used kitchen grease, there has been a rash of late-night kitchen grease thefts. People with trucks come in at four a.m. when the restaurants are closed. They pump the grease into tanks in the back of their pickups, and drive off.

The first reaction from fast-food restaurant owners was, "Good for them." But then they looked at what kitchen fat is selling for. Suddenly, there is a market for it. There are places around the world that run engines on the stuff. The owners started putting padlocks on their kitchen grease tanks.

Cars run not only on kitchen grease, but on corn oil. I'm told that in Brazil now 100% of all the cars there run on corn oil. Here in the Hamptons, it's harvest time. And it has not passed my notice that many farmers have built eight-foot-high fences around their cornfields. They tell me it's to keep deer out. But I don't believe them.