Posted on 08/28/2005 2:56:47 PM PDT by Racehorse
With crude oil prices already at record levels, a hurricane targeted the heart of America's oil and refinery operations Sunday, shutting down an estimated 1 million barrels of daily production and threatening to curtail refining activity in the region.
Katrina, a Category 5 storm expected to strike near New Orleans early Monday, was churning through the Gulf of Mexico. The area is crucial to the U.S. energy infrastructure _ offshore oil and gas production, import terminals, pipeline networks and numerous refining operations throughout southern Louisiana and Mississippi.
[. . .]
The U.S. has ample crude oil supplies, even if major hurricane destruction trims Gulf oil output and foreign imports, but refining capacity is extraordinarily tight. As a result, prices for gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel and other products have flirted with records and could go even higher this week.
"If this thing knocks out significant quantities of refining capacity ... we're going to be in deep, dark trouble," said Ed Silliere, vice president of risk management at Energy Merchant LLC in New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at tcpalm.com ...
Hurricane Katrina is a real threat to our oil infastructure, but I think this situation is being made far worse by oil speculators. Is George Sorros behind this oil price hike as a means of getting George Bush?
Hurricane Katrina is a real threat to our oil infastructure, but I think this situation is being made far worse by oil speculators. Is George Sorros behind this oil price hike as a means of getting George Bush?
Soros is a major currency trader. I'm not for conspiracy theories either, but
He was massively shorting the american dollar last year, and some where saying it created a trend strong enough to influence the huge run up of the Euro vs dollar.
Interesting how this was all going on during the election year where the economy was considered the most important issue.
Since then, in the later spring of this year, the dollar came on strong and the euro has sunk. I hope Soros took it in the pants when that happened.
Soros also has recently lost a case of fraud issued by the French government for currency manipulation. He had to pay over a million dollars in the settlement.
One word:
ANWAR!!!!!!!!!!
shouldn't we be worrying about the people of New Orleans rather than the oil price right now??????????
The refinery closures are bad, but the disruption and potential damage of LOOP is far worse. LOOP, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, offloads over a million barrels a day of imported crude. It's the only facility in the US that can handle the largest of the supertankers. Pretty soon we'll be hoping for $3/gallon rather than dreading it.
The next few years will be very tough economically. We are more vulnerable than maybe we have ever been.
There was just a report by a spokesman for NOAA that said he agreed with the statement that New Orleans, as we know it today, may be gone after this storm.
My pick - OIL 85. a Barrel
My pick - OIL 85. a Barrel
$100
Just filled up both cars and all my lawnmower cans. Paid $2.47, look for $3.00 TOMORROW.
"It's like the scenario from the FX movie "OIl Storm"
Well, when gas hits $5-$6 per gallon just do what the Bushbots keep saying, Adjust for inflation and be happy!
Nothing to see here, move along.
We own all of the oil sitting underneath Iraq. Why aren't we pumping it for ourselves? Gas should be 50¢ a gallon. We also own tons of oil up in the arctic. To hell with the environmental wackos - start drilling! Bush needs to get on this or his presidency will be remembered as a failure.
Of course, we should be worrying about the people of New Orleans.
But, the article is about much more than the price of oil. It is about the fuel that energizes our economy.
If the worst case concerns of some analysts turn out to be true, then we may as well be the people of New Orleans, because we will all, everyone of us, be among Katrina's long term victims.
So, it is not about being merely . . . inconvenienced . . . by shelling out a few more bucks at the pump.
Of course, it depends on how fast the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is immediately tapped and how fast we can start a large-scale exploitation of oil tar sands in Canada, oil shale in the Rocky Mountains, and liquifying coal from all over the USA as potential substitutes. Prices will be high for the short term but in the longer term as the alternate petroleum resources come online prices will start to fall fairly rapidly to something approaching current price levels. I think people are forgetting that the USA has massive reserves of coal from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Appalacian Mountains--all of which can be converted to petroleum products through coal liquification.
The analyst with the direst concern says the reserves will be of no help. Nor, apparently, would oil tar or oil shale recovery. His pessimism is based on the likelihood oil refineries outside of New Orleans will be out of commission for quite some time. There will be no or few plants available to refine the crude.
I think people are forgetting that the USA has massive reserves of coal from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Appalacian Mountains--all of which can be converted to petroleum products through coal liquification.
Worse than forgetting. Unaware.
What would be required to quickly convert and distribute enough coal-extracted oil sufficient to replace lost refining capacity? How quickly might it be done? Would the liquefied oil require further refining?
Actually, many oil refineries in Texas could be quickly converted (if we go on a crash program) to use a coal liquification process originally developed by the Germans and used by the South Africans extensively. It's not a cheap process but at current oil prices it's already substantially profitable to do so. Besides, a lot of supposedly useless coal mines could suddenly become useful again, since the coal instead of being burned directly to run powerplant boilers will be shipped to modified refineries to be turned into petroleum products. Indeed, coal in many ways can almost be described as "solidified crude oil."
I'm sure people will ask the question of how do we ship all that coal to coal liquification plants in most likely in Texas? Fortunately, our freight railroad system is probably the best on Earth, and as such we have the railway lines that can connect major coal fields in Wyoming, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. to the Texas plants. Indeed, coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming are already being shipped all over the eastern half of the USA (including a lot to Texas), so infrastructure upgrades won't be exorbitantly expensive.
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