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The Oil Song 2010

from The Oil Song 2010 by Steve Forbert

/

lyrics

THE OIL SONG
May 2010 update

“Oh, the engine’s gone dead!” cried the men who were there
And she passed up the dock on the wide Delaware;
Then the ship ran aground and the oil got away
And they did not report the big spill on that day.
It was hundreds of thousands of gallons galore
Stretching thirty-two miles down the Delaware shore;
There were geese in the marshes out looking for food,
They got stuck where they stood in the oncoming crude!

And it’s oil, oil,
Drifting to the sea;
An' it's oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

In the well-charted waters of the Nantucket shoals
Was a ship run aground, full of oil we were told;
In a week’s worth of rough winter weather and waves,
The boat started cracking and it could not be saved.
It was seven point six million gallons this time---
Consider the danger and think of the crime
As it poured out a slick stretching into the tide
Over one hundred miles, it came deep, it came wide!

It was oil! oil!
Pouring in the sea;
Oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

One of these ships was the Olympic Games;
The Argo Merchant was the other one’s name.
It’s sad but it’s true, things got worse for the seas,
Along came a craft called Amoco Cadiz---
Amoco Cadiz between England and France,
Big supertanker out taking a chance
With his one hundred thousand black tons of the slime,
Amoco Cadiz spilt the most of all time!

People, oil! oil!
Creeping in the sea!
It was oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.
Gallons of sludge, sixty million and more!
Sleazin' and easin'; towards many a shore;
A Mexican oil well went leaking its goo----
At that time the worst things had ever come to!


REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea;

Hey, the captain's now free and his case it is closed,
The Exxon Valdez wrecked itself I suppose;
What's left of the life in the Prince William Sound
Might not condone what our court of law found!

And it’s oil! oil!
Creeping in the sea!
Oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Saddam Hussein was a pretty strange man,
Look what he's done for his trusting homeland,
With sanctions and bombing he'd no way to sell
Crude from his captured Kuwaiti oil wells;
He sat down to think and came up with a scheme---
One that he thought might protect his regime;
Covered the Gulf in a blanket of black
Thought it might hold a few battleships back!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea,

Registered in through Liberian doors,
Passin' the Shetlands near Scotland's cold shores,
A single-hulled ship with his engine broke down
Drifted five hours and then ran aground
Right where the wildlife preserve chanced to be
And twenty million more gallons got free.
But don't worry, folks, "It's light crude!," they did say,
"It'll prob'ly break up and be gone right away!"

REPEAT CHORUS

They're banning those single-hulled tankers we hear,
Phasin' 'em out in the next sev'ral years;
There's one called The Prestige won't be junked in that heap,
It stalled off of Spain and it sank down the deep;
One million gallons of fuel reached the beach,
Nineteen more sank in some tanks that weren't breached;
If air's trapped inside 'em they'll burst any day,
If not, they'll just sit there to rust and decay…

Till it's oil! oil!
Creepin'' in the sea...

The Delaware River was back in distress,
This time the captain did not cause the mess;
The paint on his ship was the same as the type
That divers found scraped on a fifteen-foot pipe;
Therefore the pipe was the cause of the hole,
The hole in his hull was beyond his control;
Hey, whomever knows how that pipe got stuck there---
Thanks for the half-million-gallon nightmare!

REPEAT CHORUS
Which was oil, oil,
Yeah, creepin' to the sea,
It was oil. it was oil...

The Israeli Army was bombing Beirut
Cause Hezbollah kidnapped some Israeli troops;
The Lebanese oil was in tanks near the sea
Cause that's where those oil storage tanks tend to be;
The Israeli bombs hit the tanks on the shore,
The oil isn't stored in those tanks anymore;
The Mediterranean tourism buzz
As per The Holy Land ain't what it was!

REPEAT CHORUS
Now it's oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea...

A barge full of oil hit a tanker last night,
The good news I guess is the tanker’s alright;
The barge broke in two and so old New Orleans
Got stuck with what newscaster teams call a “sheen”
The riverfront walk was a-funk, yeah, with fumes,
The Coast Guard was rollin' out red plastic booms
To block off the spill and contain it … (good luck!)
Four hundred thousand thick gallons of muck!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' to the sea...

We're pumpin' out petrol, no matter what cost
And now that eleven men's lives have been lost
The price is as high as rig workers can pay—
Payin' the price for the U.S. of A.
A deepwater rig called Horizon went down,
No way to seal off its pipe has been found;
So south Louisianans all wait for to see
Just what the landfall of this spill will be. . .

People, oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

credits

from The Oil Song 2010, released May 12, 2010
Steve Forbert --- acoustic guitar
Steve Allen -- twelve string acoustic guitar
Charlie Chadwick---- bass and drums
Will Barrow-- accordion

Produced by Steve Forbert and Charlie Chadwick

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Steve Forbert

Folk-Rock, singer-songwriter. Romeo's Tune was his first major hit in 1979. Hometown: Meridian, Miss. Released 22 studio albums, including a Grammy-nominated tribute to fellow Meridian, Mississippi native, Jimmie Rodgers.

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