[Harry]

Hurricane Latest News: Rita News

[Graeme]

EIA Projects Speedier Recovery of Gulf Gas Infrastructure

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Energy Information Administration in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for December projects a speedier recovery for hurricane-impaired Gulf of Mexico natural gas infrastructure, citing the innovative methods producers are employing to reroute their gas around damaged pipelines to reach working processing plants.
"The interconnectivity of the natural gas gathering system has helped speed the recovery of shut-in production as suppliers reroute gas flow around damaged pipelines to active processing

plants...Consequently, in this outlook we have accelerated the recovery of the natural gas supply system from our November outlook prediction. We now expect shut-in federal Gulf of Mexico natural gas production to fall to 0.66 Bcf/d (6.5% of pre-hurricane Gulf production) by March 2006," the statistical arm of the Department of Energy (DOE) said in its latest outlook, which was released Tuesday.

At the start of this month, an estimated 36% of federal Gulf of Mexico oil output (509,270 bbls/d) and 29% of federal Gulf of Mexico gas production (2.7 Bcf/d) remained shut in due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Onshore Louisiana, about 40% of the state's oil and gas production remained offline, but it is projected to be fully restored by the end of March 2006, the EIA said.

[SinisterBlueCat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4520910.stm

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')There was a time when LA was better known for its oil wells than its movies: in the words of one expert, they ruined a perfectly good oil field by building a city on top of it.

And with property prices falling, some believe the day may come when people tear down houses in Hollywood in order to drill for oil.

[bruin]

So how much oil is in Southern California?

[bruin]

Answer to my own question:


The first year of commercial oil production in California was 1876.

California is the fourth largest oil-producing state in the United States.

During 2001, California’s crude-oil production totaled about 293.7 million barrels of oil, or about 800,000 barrels a day. This is about one-half of the state’s daily oil consumption.

About 48,507 oil and gas wells are currently producing in California.

The deepest active onshore oil well in California is 14,570 feet deep.

28 California counties produced oil and gas in 2001.

California has an estimated reserve of 3.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil.

Nearly eight times more water than oil is produced from California's oil and gas fields. In fact, the volume of water produced each year matches the freshwater needs of the City of San Francisco.

Since injection operations began in California in the 1940s, more than 70 billion barrels of produced water have been injected into oil and gas zones and other nonpotable aquifers without causing any known degradation of fresh waters.


Link:

http://www.consrv.ca.gov/DOG/helpFaq.htm

[Leanan]

Divers Work the Gulf Floor to Undo What Hurricanes Did

A very sobering description of the massive damage the hurricanes did. A lot of production is still offline, some of it forever.

[nth]

If we are going to have hurricanes every year and they do this much damage every year, should they bother?

[Leanan]

They must be wondering that themselves:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')The storms cut a huge swath over the landscape," said Allen J. Verret, the president of the Offshore Operators Committee, an industry group. "We were still recovering from Hurricane Ivan when the terrible sisters came."
Now, he said, "we are all concerned by how long it takes to bring it all back up again."
Few will openly say so, but oil companies are racing against the clock. In less than four months, the next hurricane season kicks off.

[mekrob]

I remember hearing the rebuttals from meterologists of how global warming isn't really responsible for the increased intensity and numbers of hurricanes in recent years. Instead, they go in 25 year cycles. Easy, then hard, then easy, etc, and that we just hit the hard cycle a few years ago. So ~20 years of this and many years of worse hurricanes? YAY.

[Leanan]

Worse than that...the "natural cycle" story is viewed by many climatologists as a crock. Global warming is increasing hurricanes, at least in the Atlantic (which are the ones we're worried about). Both frequency and intensity. The Science of Deception
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')R Michael Mann: Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC); Penn State Department of Meteorology: "We were hearing operatives from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) repeating, as if on cue, the mantra that this was all just part of a "natural cycle" in the climate. Mind you, the peer-reviewed scientific literature was indicating just the opposite. But not a hint of that from the NHC folks. Nothing but certainty in their pronouncement that this was all part of a "natural cycle" (and thus, nothing to worry about). Surreal is the only way I can describe it."

[LadyRuby]

I remember how closely I (and many of us) was following Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

The DOE was saying that by January virtually everything would be on-line again. "Yeah, right," we said.

Frankly I'm surprised that things are chugging along pretty well oil-wise since then. Is it just because we're not at the peak driving season yet?

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LadyRuby', 'I')s it just because we're not at the peak driving season yet?

[Leanan]

The world opened up their SPRs. Ours, Europe's, Japan's. Plus, high prices are causing demand destruction. Not so much here, but overseas. South America, Africa, Asia.

That could actually go one for quite some time. Poor farmers have no fuel or fertilizer in Kenya or Bangladesh. We gripe about paying more to fill up our SUVs.

[Magus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '
')The Science of Deception

Political hack tries to censor respected scientist

[nth]

About Global warming:
Scientists think global warming will cause greater frequency and severity of hurricanes. This does not mean that hurricanes do not have cycles. Hurricanes do come in cycles, but scientists believed that this cycle will be stronger and more powerful than previous because of global warming.
Regarding SPR:
As for plenty of oil, the SPRs were barely used at all. Only a few million barrels and less than half of what was offered was used.
Regarding oil supply:
US has refinery constraints, but there are no refinery constraints if environmental laws are lifted and refineries can use lower quality oil or do less processing on lower quality oil. You add the fact that Europe has ample capacity to refine more fuel, which were delivered to US.
At no time in the past 3 years do we have lack of crude oil. On the contrary, several sour crude oil producers have a hard time selling their oil. They had to sell it at insane discounts, so most are not even at full production.

[AlCzervik]

Interesting, Ruppert was pretty much on the mark last fall.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hen I asked the single most important question I had brought to the conference. “We know about the hurricane damage to refineries, to the terminals, and that we have lost 108 rigs in the Gulf. But what about the pipelines from rig to shore? If those are down, nothing else matters.”
As usual, Simmons showed no hesitation. “You know why you haven’t heard anything? Because they don’t have any idea. It’s hard to make a report when you don’t know anything. Unfortunately, there are some reports that say that the pipelines aren’t leaking. But so what? They’re not on. Nobody’s turned them on because they don’t know how extensive the damage is and they don’t know whether they’re going to start pumping oil and gas directly into the water.”
If Simmons is correct then that means that all US oil and natural gas production from the Gulf (except for the small portion transported by tanker) is still shut in and whether rigs are standing and refineries are working, as touted in the press, is irrelevant if there’s no way to get the product ashore.
Upon hearing what Simmons had told me, a retired production manager from the Gulf who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “He’s right but I can tell you that the pipeline damage is catastrophic and it’s going to take years to fix.”

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Hurricanes do come in cycles, but scientists believed that this cycle will be stronger and more powerful than previous because of global warming.

[nth]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'Y')ou might want to read this thread, if you haven't: Link
Climatologists have a lot more understanding of what is causing hurricanes now. The "natural cycle" theory was basically a fudge to deal with something they didn't have a mechanism for. Now they do have the mechanisms. It's still controversial, but my feeling is the climatologists have pretty much reached a consensus that there is no "natural cycle."

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am not an expert in this area nor do much reading, but I still many experts quote cycles. You can even look at historical data and see patterns.

[mekrob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')our suicide attackers have been killed in Yemen attempting to blow up oil installations with bomb-laden cars, Yemen's interior ministry says.