"TURTLE" wrote in message
. ..

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
news

"Oscar_Lives" wrote in message
news:IhmQe.313711$xm3.306072@attbi_s21...
I just heard the mayor of New Orleans talking on CNN. He said that the
hurricane is likely to shut down 1/3 of the gasoline and natural gas
imports
to the United States this week, and that the shutdown would last for
months
to come. This sounds like some serious ****.

They shut down the off shore drilling rigs and the shipping lanes from
South
America are blocked or disrupted for a time. I don't know how real it
all is,
but you can be sure the price will go up.

Gas today was 2.629 here in CT. Home heating oil is 2.27 to 2.35. I was
able
to lock in at 2.35 for the season, up from 1.60 last year.

Bad time to be a Hummer dealer. Or an owner too I guess.

This is Turtle.

Edwin , New Orleans does off load a good amount of import oil but there is
other
ports that can take up any slack New Orleans may fall behind on. Sabine
Pass/
Houston and Lake Charles / cameron can take in what New Orleans takes in
today.
Both of these are running at 50 % to 60% of their ability.

And another thing : Where they off load tankers at in New Orleans it will
not be
hit by the high water and tidel wave. All this docking to do this is
inland and
not exposed to the gulf. The water will rise in that area and then go back
down
and they can go back to off loading the oil. Also about 1/2 the oil that
is off
loaded at New Orleans . The ships go on up to Baton Rouge to off load
about 60
miles inland from New Orleans. Only the Super tankers have to stop in New
Orleans. Also just about all the refinerey are not in the city but up on
high
ground out of the city.

It's just a bunch of hooppla going on here.

TURTLE


Katrina cuts oil output by a third
As storm gathers strength and heads toward land, there's plenty to fear in
the oil patch.
August 28, 2005: 5:27 PM EDT

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. energy companies said U.S. Gulf of Mexico crude oil
output was cut by more than one-third on Saturday as Hurricane Katrina
appeared poised to charge through central production areas toward New
Orleans.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to roughly a quarter of U.S. domestic oil and gas
output, with a capacity to produce about 1.5 million barrels per day of
crude and 12.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas.

As of Saturday, 563,000 barrels daily crude output had been shut in due to
the threatening storm.

Shell Oil Co., which was evacuating all 1,019 of its offshore workers in the
central and eastern Gulf on Saturday, had the bulk of closed Gulf daily oil
production, with 420,000 barrels turned off.

Shell also said 1.345 billion cubic feet per day, or Bfd, of natural gas had
been shut by Saturday.

Total daily Gulf natural gas output shut on Saturday was 1.9 billion cubic
feet.

Chalmette Refining LLC, which operates a New Orleans-area refinery, was
shutting down production in preparation for the approach of the hurricane,
which is predicted to produce winds near 131 mph (210 kph) when it charges
ashore on Monday.

Chalmette is a joint venture between Exxon Mobil Corp. and Venezuelan state
oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA and operates a 190,000-bpd refinery 9
miles east of downtown New Orleans.

The shutdown was to be completed by Katrina's predicted landfall on Monday
afternoon, said Chalmette spokeswoman Nora Scheller.

Other southeast Louisiana refineries were operating on Saturday but were
reducing staff and preparing for possible shutdowns, the companies said.

Ship traffic along the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico to New
Orleans was halted on Saturday when ship pilots said conditions were already
unsafe to continue moving vessels along the waterway.

The U.S. Coast Guard was warning mariners of possible waterway closures
along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts as early as Sunday
afternoon.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port LLC stopped offloading tankers in the Gulf
of Mexico at midday on Saturday. The LOOP, which is the only U.S. offshore
oil port, takes an average 1 million barrels in foreign crude from tankers
in the Gulf.

While offloading is halted, the LOOP is supplying refiners via pipeline with
crude stored on shore.

Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale,
with catastrophic winds of 175 mph (284 kph), just before 2 p.m. EDT (1800
GMT) on Sunday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Its central pressure -- a measure of a storm's intensity -- fell to 906
millibars, making Katrina the second strongest storm on record after the
Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys. That storm recorded a
minimum central pressure of 892 millibars on landfall.

"If it stayed at this intensity, it would be one of the two or three
strongest to ever hit this country," Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the
hurricane center, told CNN. "And on top of that of course we have a special
concern for the area -- New Orleans is below sea level."

Katrina was 180 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River
and heading northwest at 13 mph (21 kph). Hurricane force winds could be
felt 105 miles out from the center.

The hurricane center warned of destructive winds along the Gulf Coast from
the Florida-Alabama border, through Mississippi and west to Morgan City in
Louisiana, and said Katrina could bring up to 15 inches of rain.

Its track would send it through key U.S. oil and gas areas in the Gulf of
Mexico, and Katrina seemed likely to affect already sky-high gasoline
prices. Oil rigs were evacuated.

The last Category 5 to strike the area was Hurricane Camille in 1969.
Camille, which registered a minimum pressure of 909 millibars at landfall,
just missed New Orleans but devastated Louisiana and Alabama, killing
hundreds. Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed the city of Homestead south of
Miami in 1992 and ranks as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history,
was also a Category 5. Its central pressure was 922 millibars.

Katrina was originally projected to take a path west across southern
Florida, turn north in the eastern Gulf and strike the Florida Panhandle as
a minimal hurricane.

As late as Friday afternoon, many producers were taking a wait-and-see
approach common with eastern Gulf storms, where oil and gas drilling and
production are sparse.

But the storm's long drift westward Friday afternoon and evening meant it
was gaining intensity from deep, warm Gulf waters and would not turn north
in time to avoid production areas.

Katrina is expected to reach land sometime Monday morning, according to CNN
meteorologist Brad Huffines.