[retiredguy]

I agree with you fluffy, but with nukes and coal-fired plants not palatable to the general public, NG was the natural choice to produce electricity. Of course, the public still expected an increase in electricity production.
My choice is to install a wood-burning stove where my fireplace used to be. For the time being, there is still a lot of wood to burn around here.
Having said that, gas fireplaces still vastly outsell those that burn wood here.
And there won't be a collapse???

[Jaymax]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('tokyo_to_motueka', '[')url=http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=AP&Date=20050904&ID=5084680]Grim Outlook for 4 Gulf Coast Refineries[/url]
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he prospects for the other four refineries that shut down ahead of the storm are more dire. The plants, in hard-hit areas southeast of New Orleans and in Mississippi, can process some 880,000 barrels a day of crude, more than 5 percent of total U.S. capacity.

[Leanan]

This blog is from Friday, but has some good info on Katrina's effect on the oil and gas production, including lots of charts and graphs.

This one, for example:



His Thursday blog is also worth a read. Among other things, it's got this refinery status report, from the Dept. of Energy:

[J-Rod]

Update on current damage assessment
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ouston: Hurricane Katrina has damaged or displaced an estimated 58 Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and drilling rigs, the American Petroleum Institute has announced. Thirty of the rigs have been reported lost.
No company breakdown was available, said Tim Sampson, an API spokesman.
One of the more significant reported losses of production equipment came from Houston's Apache Corp.
On Friday, Apache said it lost eight platforms that had produced 7158 barrels of oil and 12.1 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.
That is about 10 per cent of the lost oil production and 2 per cent of the shut-in gas reported earlier this week, company spokesman Bill Mintz said.

[Armageddon]

is this hurricane damage to the refineries and rigs worse than they are telling us ? and what are the implications

[Leanan]

I think it is worse than they are saying. Bad news is bad for their stock price, y'know, so they have every reason to spin it.

We should probably look at what happened to Ivan for guidance. As I recall, at first they said damage was minimal, no worries. The full extent of the damage wasn't known for months.

[frankthetank]

Some updated info: LINK
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Damage to oil platforms and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Hurricane Katrina could be three times as bad as when Hurricane Ivan struck the area last year, warned international energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
Eugene Kim, senior energy analyst at WoodMac's Houston office said efforts to inspect damage to offshore installations and subsea pipelines will be severely hampered by the mass destruction of
onshore communication, power networks and lack of crew willing to leave their families to go offshore. ...
The US market has lost about 42 million gallons of gasoline production daily, equal to 10-per cent of the nation's normal consumption, according to government estimates.
Kim said: "We expect a definite negative impact on prices, not only from Hurricane Katrina, but because we're heading into high winter demand for heating oil with tight supplies."
The American Petroleum Institute estimates that about 58 oil and gas platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have been damaged, including Shell's Mars deepwater platform.
"Mars is a much larger producer than the fields which were damaged by Hurricane Ivan, " Kim said. He warned that damage estimates so far are based on purely visual assessments and the true extent of damage may be far greater. "Only when you reman the platforms and push the start button will you know the damage level. It's early estimates, but the numbers look quite staggering . . . these are three times greater than with Hurricane Ivan."

[frankthetank]

more from rigzone.com
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Coast Guard reported Monday that 26 oil platforms are missing, and 18 are damaged to varying degrees.

[Leanan]

Wow. Three times as bad as Ivan would be very bad, indeed.

And there could be more where Katrina came from. We're still a couple of weeks from the start of peak hurricane season.

[richardmmm]

Natural Gas is looking to be more of a problem than Oil.
However LNG can be imported quite easily and is already being imported: Link
This terminal for example can handle as much as 2% of US total consumption.
There is always the coal gas option.
Natural Gas was the cheap choice of the 90s, but I think the oil companies pushed it on everyone so that they could hike the prices later on.
As usual they planned ahead and no one else did so they get to drain everyone's wallets as usual.
Plus they'll be locking in all the utilities on contracts for the winter at high prices on gas supply, before dropping the price shortly after.
EIA
actually it looks like about 10% of NG is currently imported and they could probably ramp that up to 20% if necessary. 25% of total US production is said to be in the GOM, but 25% of that is back on line, so assume mid term loss of 10-15%. It can pretty much be covered from imports and extra prodcution from other US fields.
it's looking more tenuous on paper than oil, I have to admit, but the price has also gone from $2 to $12, so it's due a pull in. It's way over done the blow off on NG.

[sjn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('richardmmm', 'N')atural Gas is looking to be more of a problem than Oil. ... it's looking more tenuous on paper than oil, I have to admit, but the price has also gone from $2 to $12, so it's due a pull in. It's way over done the blow off on NG.

[fluffy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('richardmmm', 'N')atural Gas is looking to be more of a problem than Oil.
However LNG can be imported quite easily and is already being imported. Link
This terminal for example can handle as much as 2% of US total consumption.

[tokyo_to_motueka]

bloomberg
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Plants on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and near New Orleans may be off line for six months to a year, according to Kinetic Analysis Corp. of Savannah, Georgia, which uses computer models to assess natural disasters. A ConocoPhillips plant in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, probably had the worst damage, the firm said.
``I've never seen anything as devastating to the refining industry,'' said Dan Robinson, 57, president of Placid Refining Co. LLC, which operates a refinery near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. ``This is going to cause the refining capacity in this area to be down a lot longer than it has ever been.''
Exxon Mobil Corp. said yesterday it hadn't been able to complete an inspection of its 190,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana, just east of New Orleans. ConocoPhillips and other refinery owners said they can't yet estimate when plants will return to service.
Companies are providing almost no information about their facilities so far, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Neil McMahon said in an interview. ``They're concerned about their own employees and getting people back to work and making sure that they're safe,'' he said. ``They're devoting time to the human side, which is correct.''

[RdSnt]

Anybody hear about the Thunderhorse platform. DId it survive? Was it listing like the last time?

[frankthetank]

it survived...maybe next time?

[AirlinePilot]

The underwater story is going to be very important I believe. We need some info on that ASAP. Here we have lost 5% of refining capacity for lets say 6 months. NOBODY KNOWS yet what the loss is in production is with any certainty.

I think the underwater damage coupled with these refinery shutdowns, plus the lack of workers (lost/homeless) is going to be a triple threat that will plunge us right back into a price spike after the short term "feel good" climate is over. Right now the foreign imports of extra crude and from the SPR are a VERY short term panacea for what will be the big game come the crunch this fall and winter with heating oil. Hope and pray for a warm winter across the north this year.

Once again I do not believe the analysts are connecting the dots on this one. We may be flush with crude for the short term, but that puddle will dry up in a hurry once we restart the refineries again. I fear this attitude that things are getting back to normal will bite us in the ass with regards to consumption. Should have used this crisis to start massive conservation, but we will go right back to business as usual, suck up all the extra crude and watch the next big price spike as we see the lack of refinery problem rear its ugly head once again.

Demand will be very interesting to watch over the next month or two.

[Ming]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'T')he underwater story is going to be very important I believe. We need some info on that ASAP. Here we have lost 5% of refining capacity for lets say 6 months. NOBODY KNOWS yet what the loss is in production is with any certainty.

I think the underwater damage coupled with these refinery shutdowns, plus the lack of workers (lost/homeless) is going to be a triple threat that will plunge us right back into a price spike after the short term "feel good" climate is over. Right now the foreign imports of extra crude and from the SPR are a VERY short term panacea for what will be the big game come the crunch this fall and winter with heating oil. Hope and pray for a warm winter across the north this year.

Once again I do not believe the analysts are connecting the dots on this one. We may be flush with crude for the short term, but that puddle will dry up in a hurry once we restart the refineries again. I fear this attitude that things are getting back to normal will bite us in the ass with regards to consumption. Should have used this crisis to start massive conservation, but we will go right back to business as usual, suck up all the extra crude and watch the next big price spike as we see the lack of refinery problem rear its ugly head once again.

Demand will be very interesting to watch over the next month or two.

[frankthetank]

How can this not be REALLY BAD???

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ix U.S. refineries ravaged by Hurricane Katrina remain down on Wednesday and at least four of these facilities could be out of operation "for months," Energy Information Administration chief Guy Caruso told a House panel on Wednesday. EIA is the statistical arm of the Energy Department. Those refinieres still out "will probably take longer" to restore, Energy Undersecretary David Garman told the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Energy Department expects one of the six refineries to be fully operational by the end of Wednesday and another to take up to two weeks, according to an assesment released Wednesday.

[Leanan]

CNN just reported that Shell says their Mars platform will out of commission until at least next year.
Remember the first reports from Shell? "Some damage to the upper deck." Obviously low-balling the damage, since the photos showed the superstructure was trashed and the legs broken off.
Now, a week and a half later, they admit it's not going to be pumping oil any time soon.
I think that's an indication of how this is going to go. They are going to soft-pedal the damage reports as long as they can, and dribble them out little by little, to avoid spooking the markets too much.

[Eli]

Yep Leanan
I think you are absolutely correct. It seems to me that the powers that be are really trying to keep a lid on this situation.
The EIA numbers come out and they are far better than what most expected and the natural gas decline along with the oil decline since Katrina do not add up.
And 5% of the refining capacity has yet to come back on line and they have recieved considerable damage.
I must commend them for really reining in the markets .