Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

Up and out the door at O Dark 30 to catch the first flight to Houston for a day of meetings. The morning meeting, a project status update, went pretty well. It stayed on topic and folks didn't try to engineer a solution in the meeting. The afternoon meeting was a different story. It started with one of the brain trust talking about a highly specialized technical subject (lateral bucking in sub sea pipelines) and treating us to a detailed review of his research in an accent that almost nobody could understand. At about the mid point of the meeting, the leader asked about taking a short break. The next speaker assured us that she would be short and wanted to talk before the break. 30 minutes later she was still talking about a ramp up procedure for a well that wouldn't be put into production until 2015!

Sometimes I wonder why the price of gasoline is so low and how major oil companies manage to make a profit.