By JOHN P. TRETBAR

Baker Hughes reported 952 active drilling rigs across the country Friday, up 12. There are 763 total rigs drilling for oil in the US, which is up seven and more than double the number from last year at this time. There are 189 rigs actively targeting natural gas. In Canada 14 rigs fell off the active list, down to 175 total. Independent Oil & Gas Service reported 13 active rigs in eastern Kansas, down one, and 20 west of Wichita, down two. In Ellis County, they’re moving in completion tools at one lease. Drilling is underway at one lease in Barton County, where they’re moving in rotary tools at one site, and moving in completion tools at two more.

There were just 14 permits filed last week for drilling at new locations across Kansas, 724 so far this year. There were three east of Wichita and 11 in Western Kansas, including one in Barton County.

Independent Oil & Gas Service reported 31 new well completions last week across the state, 21 in eastern Kansas and 10 west of Wichita. There was one new completion in Russell County and one in Stafford County.

Operators across Kansas filed just 141 intent-to-drill notices last month, for a mid-year total of 781. That’s more than last year’s 448, but well below the 1,285 filed through the second quarter of 2015, and the 3,831 intents filed in 2014. There were six intents filed with the KCC in June in Barton County, three in Ellis County, one in Russell County and one in Stafford County.

In a first-of-its-kind settlement, an Oklahoma oil company has come to terms with a woman who sued them for injuries suffered in a 2011 earthquake she said was caused oilfield saltwater disposal. The Stillwater News-Press reports Spress Oil settled with Sandra and Gary Ladra for an undisclosed amount. The 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Central Oklahoma was the state’s largest ever. Sandra Ladra was injured when rocks and bricks from her chimney fell on her legs. The initial lawsuit claimed damages totaling more than $75,000. The Oklahoma Supreme Court had to determine whether the courts or the Oklahoma Corporation Commission had jurisdiction over the matter before it could be heard. This means future cases will be heard by the courts and not state regulators. The Ladras’ lawsuit continues against another oil company, with a hearing scheduled July 12.

Halliburton has hired about 100 new oilfield workers each month this year to keep up with surging demand in West Texas, a sharp turnaround after the job-killing oil bust. The Houston Chronicle reports the oil field service company has expanded its active fleet of fracking trucks and pumps by 30 percent in recent months. Its workforce in the region has grown by more than a third to 2,700 employees. Many of those were recruited outside of West Texas. The company held job fairs in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Nevada.

China has ramped up purchases of U.S.crude, as the glut makes our product cheaper than its Mideast rivals. The Wall Street Journal says China now buys 100,000 barrels a day from the U.S., 10 times the average of a year earlier, shortly after Congress lifted the US export ban. Imports in April and May jumped to more than 180,000 barrels a day on average. U.S. oil sales to China may reach more than $1 billion this year, up from $150 million last year. Russia, Saudi Arabia and Angola are still the top suppliers to China.

We told you about the first supertanker to ever navigate the channel at Corpus Christi last month. The New York Times says the successful docking of the French-flagged supertanker Anne at Occidental is seen as the herald of an export boom. There’s already ample evidence: oil exports grew slowly through most of 2016, but this year there has been a surge reaching 1.3 million barrels a day — roughly 15 percent of domestic production — which even at today’s depressed prices is worth more than $1.5 billion a month.

Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex lost $3.2 million per day from fuel theft last year. That’s the equivalent of two percent of total sales. According to a government report cited by BN Americas, Pemex reported a total of 6,537 illegal taps on pipelines last year, larger than earlier reports and the highest annual number so far. The number in 2009 was 310. Media reports in Mexico say the big players now are the criminal drug gangs acting in concert with corrupt oil company officials.

When F.D.R. proclaimed that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” we had not yet developed nuclear warfare. Today, with nuclear armaments expanding in North Korea and the increasing threat of non-governmental terrorists securing or building nuclear bombs, there is good reason to be very worried.

We came closer to nuclear annihilation in the Cuban missile crisis under President Kennedy than most of us realize. In the bio-documentary of Robert McNamara, “Fog of War,” we hear the taped committee discussion where Kennedy faces two replies from the Soviet Union. J.F.K. wisely follows the civilian advice to respond to the less militaristic message. As a high school student at that time, I joined the rest of America in sighing relief that all ended well.    

But we came much closer to an exchange of nuclear missiles and worldwide devastation than we knew. William J. Perry, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997 was a young photo analyst at the time. In his book “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” he reveals the pure luck that prevented a civilization-ending war. The Soviet fleet that approached our Cuban blockade included submarines equipped with nuclear torpedoes. Because underwater communication was difficult, the Soviet submarine captains had been given full authorization to decide whether to open fire. When our fleet attempted to force a submarine to the surface, the submarine captain gave the order to fire nuclear torpedoes at our destroyer. It was only by chance that the fleet commander, Vasili Arkhipov, was aboard that submarine and countered the order—and prevented World War III.

But the U.S. had risky commanders as well, including General Curtis LeMay whose advice to go ahead and bomb the Cuban missile sites was rejected by Kennedy. Only long afterward did we learn that the Soviet commanders manning those Cuban missiles, similar to the submarine captains, had been given discretion to launch without further orders. We now know that had General LeMay’s plan been enacted, there is little doubt that some of those nuclear missiles—including warheads targeted at Washington, D.C.—would have gotten through.

To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In the cases of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay, every problem had a military solution with nuclear options included. There are notable exceptions, including Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall. But our history has shown the wisdom of a civilian Secretary of Defense. 

We laugh at the naive “duck-and-cover” school exercises of the early Cold War era.  But although the deadly and long-lasting effects of nuclear blasts and fallout radiation are now better understood, they are nearly completely missing from the modern school curriculum.

The actual effects of nuclear warfare are barely perceived by a public that would simply rather not know. Ironically, one of the more accurate portrayals was filmed in Lawrence. “The Day After” aired in November 1983 on ABC stations. Although it was seen by over 100 million people, there is little evidence today of any residual appreciation for the civilization-ending impact of a full-scale nuclear war. The decades-long “nuclear winter” and other effects of these weapons remain beyond the comprehension of supposedly well-informed modern citizens.

Nor do today’s generals really understand the destructive force of nuclear warfare. Thanks to the test ban treaty, we no longer have any generals who have witnessed a nuclear bomb.  Harold Agnew, a physicist from our Manhattan Project, explains “…you don’t know what heat is until you’ve seen the heat from a 10 megaton, 15 megaton hydrogen bomb. The most impressive thing about the heat is it doesn’t stop, it just gets hotter and hotter and you start to really worry even though you’re 20 some miles away….”  Agnew believed that if generals felt the intensity of that distant inferno firsthand, they would never order a thermonuclear bombing.  No audio-visuals, no modern media in 3-D, could ever replace the feel of that heat penetrating your body.  But today’s generals whose only imagery of the H-bomb is from conventional weapons and abstract videos made this a more dangerous world.

So, where is a school curriculum that helps our next generation understand these things—if there is to be another generation?

Ever hear of digging prickly pear cactus out of a pasture for 50 cents an acre?

I hadn’t either until longtime Phillips County resident Max Schick told me his story.

Schick was a boy of 10 back in the mid ‘30s when the U.S. government paid people to rid their grass of prickly pear cactus. He and his older brother toiled for two years on his family’s 65-acre pasture to rid the land of these sticky, nuisance plants threatening the western Kansas short-grass prairie.

Extremely drought-resistant, the prickly pear cactus was thriving during the drought of the Dirty Thirties crowding out the grassland and food supply of cattle.

There’s a bit of untold irony here as well. Some of the grass survived only because the cattle couldn’t reach it because of the cactus spines and stickers.

“Back then, the cactus hills dotted the pasture like fly specs,” Schick says. “They were everywhere in the pasture.”

On his family’s farm, located approximately seven miles northeast of Logan, Schick and his brother dug the cactus out of the ground with a shovel. They couldn’t afford gloves and were always fighting the little red stickers that broke off the plant and became embedded in their clothes and skin.

Every night when they finished digging cactus, the two boys would go down to the pond and try to wash themselves clean of the prickly pear cactus.

“The pond was our shower back then,” Schick recalls. “It’s how we got clean.”

The Schick brothers dug from breakfast to dinner and from dinner until supper time. After about two days of digging, they’d go out with a team and wagon and load up the cactus. Then, they’d turn around and haul the pesky cactus to the farmstead and throw them in a rick or stack.

“You had to dig each plant out of the ground and then take ‘em clean out of the pasture,” Schick says. “At the bottom of each cactus was a little bit of a root, about as round as your little finger and a couple inches long. If you didn’t get the root and all, the cactus would sprout and grow again.”

When the brothers finally finished the prickly pear excavation project, their uncle and grandfather received payment from the government. The sum of approximately $32.50 was considered a gold mine back then, Schick says.

“I didn’t get anything, my brother kept it all,” he says. “I was just trailing along for the fun. At 10 years of age and seven miles from a town we only went to three times a year, what did I need money for?”

Young Schick has no regrets about the two years of his young life spent digging prickly pear cactus out of his family’s pasture. He prefers to look at this period in his life that made him appreciate what he did have.
It was also during this time he discovered a treasure that still holds his interest nearly 80 years later.

“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Schick remembers. “It was along about 11 in the morning and I was pretty tired from all that digging. There he lay in a low spot in the pasture a few feet from a cactus I was workin’ on.”

That’s when the Phillips County farm boy discovered his first arrow head.

“It was about two inches long and worked on both sides,” Schick says. It was made of flint with a round, good point – a real beauty.”

Since that day many years ago, the Phillipsburg resident still collects, trades and admires his Native American arrow heads. He’s walked many a mile and worn out the knees on more than one pair of coveralls in search of his passion littered across the High Plains prairie.

Just a few months shy of 90, Schick reports he’s “doin’ fine.”

And with autumn just around the corner, he’s beginning to think about his pumpkin patch and telling stories with youngsters. But don’t kid yourself, he still finds time to look through his collection of arrow heads – especially his favorites.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.