oil – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: oil

August 18, 2011 – 6:00 am

pipelines and straight lines

The history of the Atchafalaya Basin — and much of the history of the greater Mississippi Delta region — is marked by an important transition in the 19th century from an agricultural economy (which had developed with the appearance of European settlers, including the Acadians who became the Cajun) to an extractive economy (initially also […]

By rholmes | Posted in floods, infrastructure, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
March 31, 2011 – 12:00 pm

a short aerial tour of the arrival of canadian oil in the united states

[“Cushing has fewer than 10,000 residents, but you can drive around for hours and still not see all the huge tanks there.”] Tuesday morning, I caught a portion of an NPR piece on the “pipelines and trucking corridors” that bring Canadian oil from the Alberta oil sands into the United States — and then promptly […]

By rholmes | Posted in geography, infrastructure, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
June 10, 2010 – 4:55 pm

urban crude

While we’re working on getting this week’s Infrastructural City post up (it’s coming!), I thought it’d be worth noting that The Center for Land Use Interpretation has just launched a new online exhibition, “Urban Crude”, which explores the oil fields of the Los Angeles Basin in intimate and fantastic detail.  Oil wells sprout like hardy […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscape | Also tagged , , , , | Comments Off on urban crude | Permalink
May 14, 2010 – 1:00 pm

reading the infrastructural city: chapter three index (updated 17 may)

[Crude City today: a woman crosses oil pipelines in the Niger delta; photograph by Ed Kashi for National Geographic.] Nam Henderson ponders the relationship between urban density and oil production in Los Angeles, and wonders if future landscapes might develop from the evolution of Leo Marx’s classic formulation, the machine in the garden, to the […]

By rholmes | Posted in mammoth book club | Also tagged , , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
May 11, 2010 – 11:52 am

oildorado

You’ve arrived at week three of our reading of The Infrastructural City; if you’re not familiar with the series, you can start here and catch up here. It’s cliche to reference dinosaurs when describing the oil well pumps which are ubiquitous throughout the LA basin, but as a 5 year old obsessed with those prehistoric […]

By Stephen | Posted in mammoth book club | Also tagged , , | Comments (19) | Permalink