[backstop]

MD -Spot on I'm afraid.
Its the unmentionable interface between commerce & humanity.
Happenned with the Tsunami just the same.
Limited supply of choppers, under market control, with aid-workers + supplies bidding for space against the medias' crews + kit.
You know who lost, repeatedly.
I guess I'm looking for resource capitalism, where wealth in the form say of a forest is exposed to the will of the community,
as opposed to asset capitalism, where wealth in paper or code is hidden in a guarded vault . . .
regards, Backstop

[frankthetank]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')xxon had requested 3 million barrels of "sweet", or low-sulfur, and 3 million barrels of "sour", or high-sulfur, crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve located in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the government agency

[Leanan]

It doesn't sound good: Storm Damaged Many Rigs, Platforms
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')urricane Katrina damaged or displaced an estimated 58 Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and drilling rigs, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
Among those, 30 rigs and platforms have been reported lost. No company breakdown was available, said Tim Sampson, an API spokesman.
One of the more significant reported losses of platforms or rigs came from Houston-based Apache Corp. On Thursday, Apache said it lost eight platforms that produce 7,158 barrels of oil and 12.1 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
That's about 10 percent of the lost oil production and 2 percent of the shut in gas reported earlier this week, said company spokesman Bill Mintz.

[kmann]

Outlook for refineries upgraded

Apparently the refineries are in better shape than was expected.

[Jaymax]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')pparently the refineries are in better shape than was expected.

[Leanan]

I think Jaymax is right. Sounds like market-calming spin to me.

Throughout this disaster, the politicians and the oil companies have been low-balling the damage estimates. Don't want to panic people, and don't want their stock prices to drop.

The same thing happened with Ivan, IIRC. The damage was far greater than they let on. The full impact was not revealed for weeks.

[Revi]

If it's market calming, it's working! Gasoline is down 7% and crude oil is down by around 2% today as of around noon. People shouldn't panic going in to the long weekend. Is it going to affect gasoline prices? They should go down a bit, unless it's not over yet....

[Barbara]

Pure lies.
Just read on news that the EU is planning a meeting NEXT WEEK to decide about opening the Strategic Reserve and send oil to the US.
No ships are coming... but those already coming, of course.

[Revi]

If it's market calming, it's working! Gasoline is down 7% and crude oil is down by around 2% today as of around noon. People shouldn't panic going in to the long weekend. Is it going to affect gasoline prices? They should go down a bit, unless it's not over yet....

[Jaymax]

IEA press release on international release of strategic reserves: PDF
2m b/d for 30 days - I'm surprised they're exceeding the 1.5m b/d lost gulf production.
Also, interesting to note that thirty of this total sixty million b/d is coming from the US SPR, given that the SPR holds 700m bbl, and the IEA total global government controlled strategic reserve is apparently exactly double that at 1400m bbl.

[Leanan]

Big Oil Spill Spotted Near Tanks on Miss.
From AP
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')EW ORLEANS - A huge oil spill was spotted near two storage tanks on the Mississippi River downstream from New Orleans, state officials said Friday.
The oil was seen in a flyover to the Venice area by the Department of Environmental Quality.
"Two tanks with the capacity of holding 2 million barrels appear to be leaking," the department said in a statement.
No further details were given.

[tpm]

It is reported that Homeland Security is denying Spill investigation by Louisiana Environmental officials-

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9175553/

[kmann]

Maybe the oil spill is actually the SPR supply release.

[frankthetank]

THe US has been importing gasoline from Europe for years, right? I believe i read about this a looong time ago. Something to do with Europe producing too much(gasoline), because they use diesel.

[richardmmm]

KATRINA FUNDAMENTALS
· About 30 percent of U.S. oil production comes from platforms in the Gulf. The region receives more than half of U.S. oil imports and is home to about 50 percent of the nation's refining capacity.
· (9/2) The eight refineries still shut as of earlier today had a combined processing capacity of 1.5 million barrels of gasoline a day, according to an Energy Department report. Two refineries are expected to be back on line next week.
· (9/2) The U.S. Minerals Management Service said today that 90% of oil production and 79% of natural gas production are still shut down.
· (9/2) An Associated Press poll Thursday showed 24 percent of Americans listed soaring fuel prices as their chief concern--second only to the war in Iraq--as gas prices jumped by as much as 50 cents overnight in some states.
· The three global recessions since World War II were all driven by spikes in oil prices.
· The U.S. economy has been more resilient in the face of rising oil prices recently because oil is a smaller part of the economy than it was when prices climbed in the 1970s and 1980s.
· Economic losses from Hurricane Katrina will exceed $100bn, according to Risk Management Solutions, a firm that provides catastrophic risk data to insurers.
· New Orleans metropolitan area had 617,300 payroll jobs in July. There are currently more than a million displaced people.
· Hurricane Katrina may cost 500,000 Americans their jobs this month, the biggest decline in payrolls in more than 30 years and a loss that will show up as early as next week in claims for unemployment benefits.
· (9/2) Refiner gasoline margins jumped to more than $50 a barrel at one stage during the week before falling back to $25 a barrel yesterday. Gasoline futures in New York rose 17 percent this week.
· (9/2) Winter natural gas prices are hovering near record levels of about $12.60 per million British thermal units. Unlike oil or gas, there are no emergency global stockpiles of gas that can be transported to the U.S.
· (9/2) A senior White House official said about half of the refining capacity of the U.S. Gulf Coast should be back in production within two weeks--less than the months some industry watches warned it would take.
· September typically is the most active month in the June-through-November Atlantic Basin hurricane season. The full-season average is 10. There have already been 12 named storms this season, including Katrina. Even another tropical storm could set the reconstruction back for months.
· Hurricane Katrina damaged or displaced an estimated 58 Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and drilling rigs, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Among those, 30 rigs and platforms have been reported lost.
· (9/2) The largest refined-oil-products pipeline in the United States, the Colonial Pipeline, which was shut because of power outages, is now running at about two-thirds of its normal 2.3 million barrel-per-day capacity.
· The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its 26 members, including the United States, would release two million barrels per day (bpd) of oil over an initial period of 30 days.
· Tanker rates for carrying petrol from Europe to the US rose 60% this week as oil trading companies booked tankers to transport supplies across the Atlantic to alleviate tight gasoline supplies in the US.
· Canada, already a major oil supplier to the United States, will send an extra 91,000 barrels per day of crude to the United States to help make up for shortages caused by Katrina
· The Bush administration on Friday ordered the sale of 30 million barrels of crude oil from the government's emergency stockpile to halt runaway oil prices triggered by Hurricane Katrina.
· The Port of New Orleans is largest export terminal for grains in the U.S. Seventy percent of all U.S. grain and oilseed exports are shipped out of the Port of New Orleans, according to the USDA.
· The Des Moines Register reported that Hurricane Katrina could cost the ag sector over $1 billion in losses resulting from cancelled exports, higher fuel and fertilizer costs, and transportation problems along the Mississippi river. The figure could be higher if shipments do not resume within two to four weeks.
· About half of all U.S. grain exports typically travel through New Orleans-area ports, but the percentage is even higher for U.S. corn and soybeans shipped overseas--62 percent.
· On average, 60 million bushels of grain per month--2 million bushels daily--leave the United States for export markets via New Orleans,
· Terminal elevators upstream have halted barge shipments to New Orleans, and some have slowed, or even stopped, grain purchases
· Bunge, the world’s largest oil-seed processor, has evacuated its soybean operation in Destrehan, La, its main export terminal in the U.S.
· There is still a lot of grain in storage from last year's record harvest and this year’s harvest will not be small.
· (9/2) Hurricane Katrina may have destroyed about 1.5 million bags of coffee (27% of U.S. green coffee stocks) stored at warehouses in New Orleans, raising the global price of coffee and benefiting coffee growers across the world. Damage to coffee stocks in New Orleans warehouses sent coffee prices up 11% in a week.

[frankthetank]

Plenty of doom to go around in that last post. The part about grain and the ports is a biggie, considering harvesting time is very near.

Where will the farmers put the grains?

[Jaymax]

A good, but not great quality roundup - I'm wondering what the source was?
There are two glaring deficiencies making it look a bit amateurish (and hey, I'm an amateur, so (assuming this came from someone paid to do such things) there shouldn't have really been any.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('richardmmm', 'K')ATRINA FUNDAMENTALS <snip>
· September typically is the most active month in the June-through-November Atlantic Basin hurricane season. The full-season average is 10. There have already been 12 named storms this season, including Katrina. Even another tropical storm could set the reconstruction back for months. <snip>
· The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its 26 members, including the United States, would release two million barrels per day (bpd) of oil over an initial period of 30 days.
<snip>
· The Bush administration on Friday ordered the sale of 30 million barrels of crude oil from the government's emergency stockpile to halt runaway oil prices triggered by Hurricane Katrina.

[tokyo_to_motueka]

i strongly suspect the situation is much worse than the spinmeisters are making out.
but how long can they keep bluffing?
"out of gas" signs at retailers will give the game away.
panic and hoarding, here we come! link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') shortage of aircraft and workers has slowed efforts by energy companies such as Exxon Mobil and BP to assess damage to the 819 staffed production platforms and 137 drilling rigs off Louisiana and Texas.
Five oil rigs from the West Delta Platform are missing, one semi-submersible rig is grounded, two mobile offshore drilling units are adrift and two semi-submersibles are listing.
The United States Coast Guard reported the Mars platform, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, was severely damaged. Mars has a production capacity of about 220,000 barrels of oil a day, or about 15 per cent of total gulf production. One report said as many as 20 oil rigs might be missing.

As rigs drift through oil and gas fields, they risk colliding with other structures or dragging anchors across under-sea pipelines - accidents that could cause spills and threaten the environment.

[mgibbons19]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('richardmmm', ' ')(9/2) Hurricane Katrina may have destroyed about 1.5 million bags of coffee (27% of U.S. green coffee stocks) stored at warehouses in New Orleans, raising the global price of coffee and benefiting coffee growers across the world. Damage to coffee stocks in New Orleans warehouses sent coffee prices up 11% in a week.

[Jaymax]

PASCAGOULA 325,000 bbl/d Chevron: Refinery damage `were not catastrophic'
Anyone care to define 'non-catastrophic'
The article (yet a -bl**dy-gain) has a clearly positive spin, but it strikes me there's a big gap between 'non-catastrophic' and 'minor'...
3 months?