At Time of Epic Storms, Oil Industry Thinks Anew

Around the world, offshore oil and gas platforms are generally built to survive without serious damage a so-called 100-year storm – a hurricane so powerful that it typically occurs only once every hundred years.

Hurricane Ivan roared through the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, generating the highest waves ever recorded there in a storm considered likely to occur only once every 2,500 years. Given the scale of the hurricane, it was inevitable that it would wreak havoc in the gulf, America’s biggest energy-producing region, uprooting miles of underwater pipelines, destroying platforms and crimping production for months.
But when industry officials, engineers and oceanographers gathered at an American Petroleum Institute conference in Houston in July to discuss ways of improving the gulf’s infrastructure, they expected to have plenty of time to work on the problems. Then Katrina struck.

“We’re seeing more 100-year events happening more often, even every few years,” said Jafar Korloo, who has designed, engineered and managed offshore platforms for Unocal, the oil company recently acquired by Chevron. “The bar has to be higher.”

New York Times