But New Orleans/Baton Rouge hub of refineries cannot supply the entire South, which is what is required without the Houston refineries.
There are refineries in Lake Charles, Louisiana area that are probably shut down because they are very close to the landfall of Ike.
And New Orleans/Baton Rouge is still recovering from Hurricane Gustav. Some of those refineries went offline after Gustav, which was only on September 1.
Overnight recovery is not possible.
And Operations Managers in Tropical Storm or Hurricane conditions cannot risk their oil refinery blowing up because of an accident because of high winds or other problems in Tropical Storm conditions.
Baton Rouge just last Friday had 110,000 homes/businesses out of power out of a total of 150,000 that were Entergy Customers (formerly Gulf States Utilities).
They almost could not play the LSU game this week with the game cancelled last week because of the terrible conditions in Baton Rouge.
This week, LSU had the contingency of playing in the Superdome (New Orleans), Independence Bowl (Shreveport), Cowboy Stadium (Irving/Dallas, TX), and LSU Tiger stadium.
Even with 4 contingencies, they still almost did not have a place to play -- until it was clear that Ike would hit Houston earlier this week...