Cairn

A cairn is a carefully placed and often precariously balanced set of stones layered on top of one another. In England, at least, these structures can last hundreds of years, with local citizens taking care not to disrupt the center of gravity.

Lucky break for Bill Gammell and the oil find his company Cairn made recently. Whether any of this has to do with his old school-chum friend Tony Blair and long-time family friend George W. Bush, we will probably never know. This story got picked up in The Independent and The Times and the implication they intended to convey was that this inner circle of mutual support eventually pays off.

"News accounts of Cairn's good fortune have been spiced up by Gammel's peculiar fortunes as a boy."

The actual oil find in the Rajasthan region of India, is big in wealth terms (ceiling estimated at 1 billion barrels), but not big in meeting long term energy needs, which once again is not pointed out in the articles.

So the bottom line is the wealthy get wealthier and the inner circle gets inwardly tighter. However, this cairn of oil will get kicked over in no time and be long gone before a small pile of rocks in Cumbria even gets nudged.