The OPECKER lies started in the mid to late 1950’s.
One side of our family was in oil drilling,
oil production and gasoline production for decades.
Two of my cousins and I wanted to get degrees to work in what had been a good business for decades for our families.
We were told by relatives and older friends in the business not to waste our time and money on worthless degrees.
Then, we got the same advice at our colleges, our freshman years.
So, we and most of friends opted out degrees associated with the industry.
One cousin, got an architecture degree and worked in various refinery sites in the summers and planned to work with the company to plan new refineries and retro existing refineries.
After he got his degree, he was hired by the company his dad and uncle worked for. Before his first summer was over his department was down sized. He was assigned to designing new gas stations. Two years later, his east coast division was shut down, and he was unemployed.
He was devastated and ended up with a divorce. He went back to school and got his PhD. Besides being a professor, he did consulting with the refinery industry.
We were lied about our nation’s oil reserves for over 50 years.
Cui bono, who benefited from the decades of lies?
It hasn’t been a lie. Those reserves were just unproducible in those days with the technology of the day. What has changed is the advent of horizontal drilling and multi-staged fracing.