Elaine Meinel Supkis
The report is just in. 113 petroleum platforms in the Gulf destroyed completely last year. Many gas and oil lines destroyed. This was a huge hit on the world oil markets. And the oil companies are making a lot of money not pumping oil.
5/1/2006, 2:36 p.m. CT
By ALAN SAYRE
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 113 petroleum production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal agency overseeing offshore drilling said Monday.The storms also damaged 457 pipelines connecting production facilities in the Gulf and bringing oil and natural gas to shore — a sharp rise from the 183 damaged pipelines identified in January, the Minerals Management Service said.
Interruption of the Gulf supply has played a role in the recent round of record-high oil and gasoline prices. Officials have said that it is likely that as much as a fifth of the Gulf's normal daily oil production of 140,000 barrels will still be off market when the next hurricane season begins on June 1.The MMS warned that additional damage likely would be discovered as more underwater inspections are conducted.
"These have been delayed because of overwhelmed support resources, such as diving equipment, support vessels, and remotely operated vehicles," said MMS regional director Chris Oynes.
Of the 113 destroyed platforms, four replacements have been approved by the MMS. The agency said those will take the place of eight destroyed platforms with a pre-storm daily production of 16,700 barrels.
I was curious about the lack of curiosity shown by the press about the oil rigs being wrecked. When hurricane Dennis raged through the Gulf of Mexico, it caused a bit of damage which made zero news impact. Just like the 5+mag earthquake right in the middle of these same oil fields was pretty much ignored, too. One would imagine with high fuel costs and the fact that our nation is now importing much more than the official figures of foreign oil, one would imagine the top brains in the news business would be hard at work on this story.
Well, I am glad the blogsphere forced the media to talk about how Colbert made Bush squirm at his "roast." Of course, if Bush were to go biking without guards, he would get a lot more flack than he got out of this TV comedian.
Mother Nature likes to balance stuff. Put something in, She takes something out. We have released the energy and chemistry of many millions of years of sun shining on Her creatures who were then killed nearly wholesale, all at once, at the end of the Permian. Much of our oil today came from that holocaust. Nearly everything died. Then lots and lots of dirt washed off of the land and it covered the moldering dead forests of primitive plantlife. Huge, thick layers of compost that built up during the glory years of the first flowering of life on earth, unimaginably thick peat, peat that was so thick, all forms of compost today are a molehill in comparison, this peat was crushed by the rocks and dirt and super-salty seas spread over this dark matter and over the eons, it was crushed, smashed into a warm stew, a liquid trapped under hundreds of feet of rock and salt.
Mother Nature abhors imbalance. Once things get out of whack, Her pendulum becomes a Edgar Allen Poe swinging scythe that hisses as it swishes out of the dark, swooping down and then rising up in its arc of destruction. We suck in our stomachs as this scythe hisses down over us and then breathe easy as it moves upwards again.
But each swing, it is set slightly lower. So it is with us today. We pump in greenhouse gasses and each season cycle, the effects are more and more exaggerated. Eventually, all hurricanes might be catagory 5s. There is that possibility.
Comments