Storm-Prone Gulf Holds Key
To Refining, Distribution;
Big Oil Keeps Supply Tight
Pipeline’s Race With the Clock
By CHIP CUMMINS in Hattiesburg, Miss., and RUSSELL GOLD in Austin, Texas
June 10, 2006; Page A1
Surging oil prices have stirred fears in Western capitals over threats to global energy security in hotspots from Iraq to Nigeria. But one of the energy world’s biggest weaknesses lies in America’s own backyard — the storm-prone Gulf of Mexico.
As the hurricane season starts this month, a little-understood episode from last summer — the shutdown of a massive gasoline conduit run by Colonial Pipeline Co. — underscores how vulnerable the U.S. energy network remains. After Hurricane Katrina blew ashore one morning late last August, red alarms lit up Carroll White’s computer console in the company’s control room, outside Atlanta. The storm knocked out electricity to seven pumping stations along Colonial’s pipeline, shutting down a major source of gasoline and jet-fuel supplies for more than a dozen states.
“We’re in big trouble,” Mr. White, a pipeline controller and former naval nuclear-reactor operator, remembers thinking. “Nobody’s gonna have gasoline.” read more
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