The Barnes-Free Conglomerate of Ewing Oil Co is a gargantuan, orderly nation, ruled by John Ross Ewing Jr with an iron fist, and notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, avowedly heterosexual populace, and free-roaming dinosaurs. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 27.405 billion Oilers are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The minute, corrupt government, or what there is of one, juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Industry, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Dallas. Income tax is unheard of.

The frighteningly efficient Oiler economy, worth an astonishing 23,906 trillion Petrodollars a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Retail, Uranium Mining, and Automobile Manufacturing. Average income is a breathtaking 872,327 Petrodollars, with the richest citizens earning 7.1 times as much as the poorest.

Summer science camps are regularly raided by narcotics police, every day has been a surprise since weather reporters turned to consulting ancient totems for their seven-day forecasts, cubicles often double as graves as citizens literally work themselves to death, and denied drugs and entertainment the nation's youth are taking to petty crime to alleviate their boredom. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Ewing Oil Co's national animal is the Budweiser Ferret, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its national religion is the Holy Capitalism.

Ewing Oil Co is ranked 43^rd in the world and 1^st in Texas for Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector, scoring 53,991.95 on the Henry Ford Productivity Index.