August 28, 2005
Katrina and New Orleans
It does not look good for New Orleans... Here is the latest three-day prediction from the National Hurricane Center:
Click for full-size Image
Putting Things In PerspectiveHe also talks about Port Fourchon:
Steve's hurricane could cause even more trouble...
When thinking about Hurricane Katrina, you might want to consider how she's going to affect your life. It doesn’t matter if you live on the Gulf Coast or not--Katrina just may affect you personally. In fact, no matter where you live in the US, this hurricane is packing enough punch to be felt from sea to shining sea, but I can't find anyone in the MSM talking about it.
Let me explain...
Most people don't think about the real damage being done by these hurricanes in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is responsible for almost 1/4 of the nation's domestic oil and gas production—this doesn’t count the imported oil and gas that is offloaded in the Gulf—but I’ll get to that in a minute. When these hurricanes blow through, oil companies have to evacuate their rigs—which means shutting down production. Like sleep, you can never make up for lost production. There are production losses planned into the production schedule, but with a year like this one, we're falling behind—and it’s one of the reasons we’re feeling it at the pumps. Then you have the rigs themselves. Let’s take Thunderhorse for example. Thunderhorse is the world’s largest offshore platform. She’s 75% owned by BP and 25% by Exxon—BP is the operator. The rig is designed to take hurricanes and other weather events and remain operationally viable. However, when Hurricane Dennis came through, something went wrong and she started listing about 20 to 30 degrees. Fast work by BP crews and the US Coastguard prevented the loss of a $5 billion rig. None of these rigs out there are hurricane proof.
Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf’s deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there’s no bridge, there’re no drilling parts and supplies.This is going to hit us hard regardless of where we live. I am very glad that President Bush has been quietly refilling our strategic oil reserves after it was drained during Clinton's administration. (He did this to artificially lower gas prices) Posted by DaveH at August 28, 2005 8:50 AM