There will be blood.

It began in 1882. “OIL IN MISSOURI,” the headline announced. “AN ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF PETROLEUM IN VERNON COUNTY.” The prospectors salivated.

But if Daniel Plainview was out for milkshakes, he probably knew to stick his straw elsewhere. Missouri’s crude runs thick and shallow — more like a plate of hot fudge than a glass of ice cream and milk.

The Columbia Missourian article “Tapping Missouri’s crude economy” examines the state’s oil prospects. Messy and complicated, they’re largely unpromising — until gas prices spike.

Our state’s western edge saw a brief oil rush in the 1980s. Then in 2008, Vernon County landowners decided $100 barrel prices were worth reinvesting in broken infrastructure, navigating complicated mineral rights, and taking chances on unexplored land for sub-par oil hundreds of miles from the nearest refinery. I’d like to research how it’s going now.

Lest we forget

In the wake of the BP disaster, old parables reemerge. One is more local than I could have imagined.

In 1988 in Vienna, Mo., Guy Wittler watched as a burst Shell pipeline “turned the Gasconade’s clear-green waters a sickly black.” A recent article recounts similarities between the current gulf spill and the Missouri debacle, including public anger, damaged ecosystems and corporate cover-ups:

“Shell downplayed the severity of the spill. At first, it said only 120,000 gallons of oil had escaped. Then it would comment only on how much oil it had recovered — about 300,000 gallons, estimating that accounted for 90 percent of the spill.

The state Department of Natural Resources threatened a subpoena before Shell admitted the oil spill was at least 840,000 gallons, a number that would rise again. Shell said it delayed reporting a figure only because it wanted to be accurate.”

That’s less than the 60,000 barrels leaking into the gulf each day, but it was still shocking at a river’s scale. It was still unnecessary.

If we’re to solve anything — which, clearly, we must — we have to reflect on the big picture. The answer isn’t to drill closer to home or to drive up regulation. It’s to stop using oil. To stop driving cars, to stop using plastic bags. To educate ourselves on what uses oil, and then to invent a better, cleaner way to produce it. Only then might the disasters cease.

(But in the Midwest, where we’re married to cars and living hundreds of miles from any inky gulfs, how can that culture change happen?)