Feb. 18, 2008, 8:05PM
A new partnership will enhance the ability to keep tabs on hurricanes in the Gulf.
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
The idea is so logical, one wonders why nobody thought of it years ago. A conversation between a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official and Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister at a storm conference in 2006 gave rise to a plan to utilize offshore oil platforms as meteorological lookout posts.
As reported by the Chronicle’s Kristin Hays, over the next seven years seven of Shell’s giant rigs will be outfitted with sensors to measure a big storm’s vital signs as it moves through the Gulf of Mexico. Although a number of small weather buoys dot offshore waters, their capabilities are limited. The new systems to be placed on installations with such names as Mars, Brutus and Auger will be fully automated and capable of measuring wave heights and direction, water temperature and sea current strength.
According to NOAA administrator and retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher Jr., the partnership between his agency and Shell is a natural melding of interests. “NOAA is in the hurricane business, and Shell is in the hurricane experience business,” Lautenbacher said. “Let’s see if we can use real information in real time to help us over the longer term.”
The area of the Gulf where the new sensors will collect data is subject to storms that can rapidly intensify when they cross over a phenomenon called the loop current, a surge of tropical water from the Caribbean. With intensity one of the most difficult aspects of hurricanes to predict, the new resources should improve forecasters’ ability to provide coastal communities advance estimates of storm strength.
Shell’s Hofmeister told the Chronicle that the arrangement is unprecedented and will allow offshore operators to improve the design of offshore platforms and coastline facilities to withstand high winds and seas. “The more information we know from offshore,” he said, “the more we can prepare for onshore consequences.”
Gulf Coast residents need every advantage in preparing for the strike of a major hurricane. Shell Oil and NOAA officials are to be commended for putting their heads together and coming up with a cost-effective way to bolster the weather bureau’s storm-tracking capabilities.
RELATED LETTER PUBLISHED BY HOUSTON CHRONICLE 21 February 2008
Overlooked by this ‘eye’
It is interesting that the Chronicle editorial “Eye on the eye” on Tuesday showed such naive amazement about the private/public relationship agreement between Shell Oil Co. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service has been monitoring offshore drilling rig weather systems for more than 50 years. Shell endowed money and began cooperation with Texas A&M University in founding the Ocean-ography and Meteorology Department in the 1950s. At that time, weather observation stations were installed across the northwest Gulf that have been providing data to the NWS in support of its hurricane and maritime weather forecast programs.
It is alarming that the NOAA administrator, Shell’s president and the Chronicle did not do just a small bit of research to find that NWS offices, as well as educational institutions such as A&M and the University of Texas, have been utilizing that data for such a long period.
DAVID SMITH
retired NWS forecaster, Houston
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5560816.html
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
