Oil

Two catalog sales next week will focus on two of the art world's main media: oils on Tuesday and woodwork next Friday and Oct. 3. Five-figure prices are expected at both. The oils will dominate the 600-lot, multi-estate sale at William H. Bunch Auctions/Appraisals beginning at noon Tuesday at the gallery in Chadds Ford and winding up with about 200 paintings by a variety of American and European artists. By far the most important will be 4 Scribes, a previously unknown oil on canvas by the African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)

Daniel Day-Lewis has a speech near the end of There Will Be Blood that is mostly about oil drainage, about the clandestine siphoning of someone else's cache of crude. As Daniel Plainview, a once lowly prospector-turned-petro titan ensconced in his California manse, he illustrates that process by supposing that he and another guy are drinking milkshakes, but that Plainview is drinking his from an especially long straw. He could reach over to the other person's milkshake with that straw, you see, and start drinking from it, too. "I drink your milkshake!"

The Coast Guard is directing the cleanup of a seven-mile-long oil slick discovered yesterday in the main shipping channel of the Delaware Bay. "Any amount of oil in the water is taken very seriously by the Coast Guard and other agencies involved," said Petty Officer John Edwards, a spokesman. "I would not say it is benign, but in the scale of oil spills, this one would be classified as relatively minor. " Small black and brown globules of oil were seen intermittently along the sheen, which the tugboat Liberty reported at 6:30 a.m., he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed a $157,500 fine against Swamp Angel Energy L.L.C., of Wichita, Kan., for alleged discharges of more than 228,000 gallons of oil brine into wells in the Allegheny National Forest in 2007. The EPA's Philadelphia office alleges Swamp Angel violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act by injecting oil wastewater into depleted production wells that were not licensed for disposal. Two company employees were sentenced last year to home detention, probation and fines in connection with the dumping.

The rise in the price of crude oil over the last week might look like a financial gusher for oil-rich states such as Texas and Oklahoma. But officials here are not betting on it - not yet. Rising oil prices used to be reason enough for a fiesta here. But when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait sent the price of Texas oil soaring from about $16 a barrel last month to more than $28 a barrel on Tuesday, state officials greeted the news calmly. "An increase in prices for one week doesn't mean anything to us," said John Bender, Texas deputy comptroller.

Well, folks, they're squaring off. Stephen Baldwin vs. Kevin Costner, that is, and the issue is oil-cleanup technology. Jury selection began Monday in a New Orleans court. Steph says Kev cheated him out of his rightful share of proceeds when oil extractors were sold to British Petroleum during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. BP put down an $18?million deposit for 32 of these oil-and-water-separator doohickeys, invented by Kev (impressive), who made a company to make them. Steph and biz partner Spyridon C. Contogouris bought stock in it. They later agreed to sell their holdings.

Glenn Brendle practices unconventional farming. He is small, farming just seven acres. He farms without the aid of synthetic chemicals. And he strives to be self-sustainable. "Basically, I'm cheap," said Brendle, whose Green Meadow Farm near Gap, Lancaster County, supplies nearly 30 Philadelphia restaurants, such as Grass Roots Cafe in Manayunk, Abraccio Restaurant in West Philadelphia, and Farmacia in Old City. That parsimonious streak sent him looking for a way to cut a huge expense his business faces each year, but this year more than ever: heating greenhouses during the winter.

If you want to make a statement about the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico, should you still wash your hair, put on lipstick, and take aspirin? Should you also wear flip-flops, use scotch tape, and paint the living room? Those items are much more connected to the BP catastrophe than they might seem. Every day a tsunami of petroleum goes into myriad consumer products, including those listed above, and it's all but impossible to avoid them. The petrochemical industry started to saturate our lives in the 1950s and '60s.

Hundreds of Southern Californians spread out across area beaches yesterday to help mop up gobs of oil and patrol for sea birds that were greased and grounded by a 295,000-gallon spill off the coast. About 100 gallons of Alaskan crude oil from the American Trader washed ashore early yesterday, soiling spots along several miles of beaches 35 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Coast Guard Rear Adm. William Kime said the soiled shoreline measured 1 1/2 miles at Huntington and three-quarters of a mile at Newport Beach.

It is a nightmarish question that has haunted presidents for 40 years. Do you send American men (and now women) to fight a land war in the Middle East to protect the flow of oil? George Bush has brushed the edge of the dilemma. Now a megalomaniacal enigma named Saddam Hussein - a man whose greed is matched by his weaponry - may push Bush into the ultimate nightmare: When is oil worth wholesale expenditure of American lives? Bush could dodge that bullet when Saddam sent Iraqi tanks, jets and troops rumbling across Kuwait.