by pup55 » Fri 23 Sep 2005, 08:37:36
It will be several days before anyone knows the extent of the damage, and a lot will depend on the damage to other infrastructure (roads, electrical, water systems, etc. ) surrounding the refineries.
What we do know is at least 2-4 more days of downtime because all of these places had to be shut down and evacuated, and it will take awhile for the crew to start them back up when the time comes. Probably within 10 days or so, most of this capacity will be back up. Houston refineries were about 2 million bbl/day, and the ones up around Beaumont another 1 million, so that's 3 mm bbl, at about 50% gasoline, so 1.5 million bbl of gasoline per day out of the inventories, times about 10 days on average, maybe a total reduction of up to 15 million barrels out of inventory. The nationwide inventory is about 195 million barrels currently, so there will still be plenty of fuel around, unless the pipelines out of there get screwed up.
We also know that 1 million Houstonians bought a 16 gallon tankful of gas and burned it up while idling their cars trying to get out of town yesterday. That's 16 million gallons, which is about 380,000 barrels, but they can't commute to work the next few days while they are sitting out in the shelters, so the net effect of this will be more or less offset inventory-wise.
I am inclined to believe the numbers posted above on the downtime effects, however, I have been down to Beaumont and Orange a few times and this area is dead flat, the water table is about 2 feet below the surface, and there really is nothing between you and the Gulf except bullrushes, so if there really is a 20-foot storm surge, this area will take awhile to dry out, and more importantly, difficult to get to the plant so you can start it up. More or less the same with Baytown, except no bullrushes, that big plant is right on a canal so as to be able to offload barges.