Hurricane Ike and Oil Refineries / Infrastructure Thread #3

Hurricane Ike’s current track predicts landfall between Corpus Christi and Galveston Saturday morning; but the storm isn’t strengthening much yet and the track has been moving northwards–so, because of the wobbles in the track, models are still uncertain. Within the current NHC storm path lies about 5 million bpd of US petroleum refining capacity. (Perspective: 5 MMBBL is about 30% of US capacity (about 15 MMBBL), and a bit less than 6% of global capacity (~85 MMBBL). Also, the MMS reported Wednesday that staff has been evacuated from 452 production platforms (63.0%) and 81 rigs (66.9%)

Because of that uncertainty, Chuck asked us to present two scenarios from respected models at this time. One is relatively innocuous, the other, well, not so much. Updated 9/11 9:30 EDT.

The Oil Drum