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Gasoline Prices Surge After Colonial Pipeline Shutdown, East Coast Fuel Shortages Loom

August 31, 2017

Gasoline Prices Surge After Colonial Pipeline Shutdown, East Coast Fuel Shortages Loom

Gasoline prices have exploded higher once again this morning – topping the Maginot Line of $2.00 for the first time since July 2015 – following reports that the main conduit for fuel from the Gulf to the East Coast has been shut due to Hurricane Harvey.

Motor fuel prices climbed as much as 6.6 percent in New York, advancing for an eighth session, while crude oil was little changed. Harvey has shuttered about 23 percent of U.S. refining capacity, potentially cutting fuel-making ability to the lowest level since 2008 and depriving the Colonial Pipeline of supplies.

Its operator was forced to shut the main diesel line late Wednesday and planned to halt its gasoline line Thursday, meaning motorists from Maine to Florida may soon see higher prices at the pump.

Colonial, which is the biggest single fuel transporter in the US, shipping more than 2.5m barrels a day on its line – or roughly one in every eight barrels of fuel consumed in the country – said in a statement late on Wednesday that its line carrying diesel and jet fuel would shut on Wednesday evening, followed by its gasoline pipe on Thursday.   

And that sent front-month RBOB above $2…

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CO2 is Changing the Jet Stream in Ways that will Create more Harveys

August 30, 2017

CO2 is Changing the Jet Stream in Ways that will Create more Harveys

The flooding over Houston has become absolutely devastating, and now it is officially record-breaking. Parts of Southeast Texas have now seen 50 inches of rain since Friday — and the rain is still falling.
“The record for total rainfall from a tropical system has been BROKEN!” the National Weather Service tweeted Tuesday morning. The previous record for wettest tropical system in the continental United States was 48 inches. Harvey had already hit 49.20, and the rain was still coming.

“Many textbooks have the 60-inch mark as a once-in-a-million-year recurrence interval,” as the Washington Post Weather Gang reported Sunday.

We’re seeing these staggering rainfall totals because this tropical storm hovered in place for days over southeast Texas, sweeping in vast quantities of moisture from the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. And the latest science points a finger at climate change for this.

Superstorm Sandy satellite image from Oct. 29, 2012. The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Sandy is part of a spate of off-the-charts extreme weather events in recent years. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/NOAA

Global Warming Linked To More Extreme Weather And Weaker Jet Stream

“The kind of stalled weather pattern that is drenching Houston is precisely the sort of pattern we expect because of climate change,” climatologist Michael Mann explained in an email to ThinkProgress. Earlier this year, Mann co-authored a study explaining how human-caused warming is changing our atmosphere’s circulation, including the jet stream, in a way that leads to “increase in persistent weather extremes” during the summer.

“I agree with Mike [Mann] that the weak steering currents over the south-central US coincident with Harvey are consistent with our expectations for a warmer world, which of course includes effects of a very warm Arctic,” Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, told ThinkProgress.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Houston Reeling Amid Outbreak Of Looting, Armed Robberies; Vigilantees Emerge

August 30, 2017

Houston Reeling Amid Outbreak Of Looting, Armed Robberies; Vigilantees Emerge

Inevitably every major metropolitan crisis brings out the best and worst of what humanity has to offer.  While hundreds/thousands of people have rushed into Houston following the epic destruction of Hurricane Harvey to help in any way possible, others have once again predictably chosen to exploit the misery of others by looting abandoned shopping centers, robbing empty homes and even breaking into the Houston Apple Store (by shooting through the front door).

The Venture @EGMNVenture

The doors to a flooded @Apple Store in appear to have been shot at with a firearm. Looters have been rampant.

In fact, just last night Houston’s Mayor was forced to impose a strict midnight to 5am curfew amid “an outbreak of looting and armed robberies“, in order to prevent property crimes against evacuated homes in the city.  As Reuters notes, the curfew came after, among other things, reports surfaced of people impersonating police officers all so they could tell residents to evacuate their homes and then promptly rob them blind.

That proved too little for county officials who set up their own location as an outbreak of looting and armed robberies prompted the city to order an indefinite curfew from midnight to 5 a.m. (0500 to 1000 GMT).

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said late Tuesday individuals impersonating police officers knocked on doors in at least two parts of the city telling residents to evacuate their homes.

Sylvester Turner ✔@SylvesterTurner

Imposing curfew from 10 pm to 5 am to stop any property crimes against evacuated homes in city limits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Houston Warns Bridges And Roads Are “Starting To Fail”

August 29, 2017

Houston Warns Bridges And Roads Are “Starting To Fail”

As Tropical Storm Harvey heads back inland, slamming southwest Texas with another 15-25 inches of rain, Housting officials are reporting that the city’s critical infrastructure is starting to fail under the weight of the floodwaters, and may soon collapse.

According to Reuters, roads and bridges in Houston have started to buckle under the impact of the catastrophic flooding in parts of the city. According to Jeff Linder of the Harris County Flood Control District, one bridge had collapsed and some roads had been damaged by the torrential rains.

Worse, the damage is far from over. As reported yesterday, the water levels at two reservoirs to the west of the city, where more than 3,000 homes have been flooded, continue to rise. Meanwhile, Buffalo Bayou, the primary drainage system that runs through the city, is holding steady and may not recede for days, said Edmond Russo, deputy engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers. According to USGS data, the Buffalo Bayou has recorded a record 33 inches of rain, and another 20 is expected in the coming 48 hours.

Graph of

Linder said the level of the Houston Ship Channel, which opens out into Galveston Bay was “at levels we’ve never seen before”, slowing the bayou’s ability to drain. Two major dams outside Houston have also begun to overflow, according to the BBC.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner confirmed that one police officer has been killed since the flooding began. The Houston police chief says the officer’s body was recovered Tuesday morning. He apparently died when floodwaters overcame his vehicle as he tried to get to his post.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Harvey is already the worst rainstorm in U.S. history, and it’s still raining

August 29, 2017

Reuters / Richard Carson

Harvey is already the worst rainstorm in U.S. history, and it’s still raining

The pictures are heartbreaking, the statistics are mind-boggling. And, incredibly, it’s still getting worse.

Since Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday night, more than 40 inches of rain have fallen in parts of the Houston metro area, producing the worst flood in the city’s modern history. The latest forecasts show another 15-25 inches on the way before Harvey clears out of the area on Wednesday. Harvey is sure to rank as the worst rainstorm in U.S. history, according to an initial analysis from the Texas state climatologist.

“Of course I’m surprised,” Houston meteorologist Tim Heller told Grist. “We tell people to prepare for the worst, but this is worse than the worst! This isn’t isolated flooding, this isn’t neighborhood flooding, this is area flooding, regional flooding. The warnings were there for 15-25 [inches] of rain, then 30, then 40. I quit giving out storm totals because I’m not sure what we’ll end up with now.”

The amount of rain so far brings new meaning to the word “unprecedented.” In just three days, Houston doubled the previous record rainfall for a full month — 19.21 inches set in June 2001 during Tropical Storm Allison (which caused the city’s previously worst flood).

So much rain has fallen that the National Weather Service had to add additional colors to its maps, in order to show rainfall totals this huge. During the peak of the rainfall on Saturday night, the local NWS office in Houston ad-libbed a dire warning and issued a “Flash Flood Emergency for Life-Threatening Catastrophic Flooding” — the first time the already-dire “Flash Flood Emergency” was considered insufficient to describe the impending risk.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When the Butterfly Flaps Its Wings

August 28, 2017

When the Butterfly Flaps Its Wings

It remains to be seen what the impact will be from Mother Nature putting the nation’s fourth largest city out-of-business. And for how long? It’s possible that Houston will never entirely recover from Hurricane Harvey. The event may exceed the physical damage that Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans. It may bankrupt large insurance companies and dramatically raise the risk of doing business anywhere along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the USA — or at least erase the perceived guarantee that losses are recoverable. It may even turn out to be the black swan that reveals the hyper-fragility of a US-driven financial system.

Houston also happens to be the center of the US oil industry. Offices can be moved elsewhere, of course, but not so easily the nine major oil refineries that sprawl between Buffalo Bayou over to Beaumont, Port Arthur, and then Lake Charles, Louisiana. Harvey is inching back out to the Gulf where it will inhale more energy over the warm ocean waters and then return inland in the direction of those refineries.

The economic damage could be epic. Much of the supply for the Colonial Pipeline system emanates from the region around Houston, running through Atlanta and clear up to Philadelphia and New York. There could be lines at the gas stations along the eastern seaboard in early September.

The event is converging with the US government running out of money this fall without new authority to borrow more by congress voting to raise the US debt ceiling. Perhaps the emergency of Hurricane Harvey and its costly aftermath will bludgeon congress into quickly raising the debt ceiling. If that doesn’t happen, and the debt ceiling is not raised, the federal government might have to pretend that it can pay for emergency assistance to Texas and Louisiana. That pretense can only go so far before government contractors balk and maybe even walk.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alabama, Tennessee, & Georgia Declare States Of Emergency As Gas Shortages Loom After Pipeline Leak

September 17, 2016

Alabama, Tennessee, & Georgia Declare States Of Emergency As Gas Shortages Loom After Pipeline Leak

As Native Americans protesters face arrest in North Dakota for blocking the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, TheAntiMedia’s Carey Wedler reports a gasoline pipeline spill is currently unfolding in the South. The leak has prompted Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to declare states of emergency.

The Colonial Pipeline, which runs from Houston to New York, began leaking on September 9, spilling 250,000 gallons of gasoline, or 6,000 barrels. The pipeline was built in 1962, and the current leak in Helena, Alabama, is the largest one Colonial Pipeline has experienced in 20 years, Reuters noted.

AL.com reported that according to the Colonial Pipeline company’s spokesperson, Bill Berry, the pipeline could still be leaking:

“The leaking pipeline was shut down [last] Friday after the leak was discovered, but Berry said there may be additional gas still inside the pipeline. The leaking section of pipeline hasn’t been excavated yet due to safety precautions, so Berry said the condition of the pipeline and cause of the leak is still unknown.”

Hundreds of employees and contract workers face health risks from inhaling vapor as they work overtime to clean up the spill, which the company says is contained to a mining retention pond. AL.com reports “the leak was discovered at the inactive mine site by employees of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission.”

The governors of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama have declared states of emergency, not due to environmental concerns, but over the gas shortage that will result from the leak. After Colonial Pipeline announced Thursday there would be a delay in restarting the pipeline because “work activity was intermittent overnight due to unfavorable weather conditions that caused gasoline vapors to settle over the site,” the price of gasoline futures rose six percent… even as crude futures prices tumbled…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Dismal Thing Schlumberger CEO Just Said about US Oil

October 18, 2015

The Dismal Thing Schlumberger CEO Just Said about US Oil

2016 to be brutal. Then, dreams of “potential spike in oil prices”

An engineer in the oil industry, who’d sold his house in Houston and bailed out after finding work in another state, just told me this:

A young civil engineer that I am working with is looking for more permanent, stable work. He talked with a head hunter today. The head hunter suggested that the young engineer stay where he is. He said he had 30,000 resumes in his database of engineers who were looking for work right now. Just amazing. I don’t know how many engineers there are in Houston. 200,000? 300,000?

I then called a friend of mine who works for Jacobs. Well, he no longer works there. He was laid off. A very seasoned engineer. He said he was glad I left Houston and that things were looking grim. Fluor and Technip had also laid off a lot of engineers. He said he heard that Fluor, which goes after megaprojects, had laid off 30 Process Engineers – which is what I am.

This is a bad indication. We are the first line of engineers on a project. Then, as the project moves forward, instrument, estimating, electrical, and structural engineers are brought on. If process engineers (chemical engineers) aren’t being used, that means there are fewer projects coming up to keep them busy.

So what happened to the hopes for a recovery?

Three months ago, Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of oil-field services giant Schlumberger, figured the oil industry in the US had bottomed out. But on Friday during the earnings call, he changed his tune.

The business environment “clearly got worsened in the third quarter,” he said. It’s going to get even worse in the US in the fourth quarter. And 2016 is going to be very tough. He doesn’t see a recovery until 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Plunge Hits Office Market, But “So Far” No Apocalypse

February 12, 2015

Oil Plunge Hits Office Market, But “So Far” No Apocalypse

“Here in Houston a number of projects have been canceled. Engineers are put on ‘hold.’ There have been some contract engineers laid off, and hiring has been suspended. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop.” That’s how an engineer in the energy sector saw it. And it captured the mood.

So the sky isn’t quite falling on the Houston property market. Not yet. With 18.4 million sq. ft. of office space under construction, the epicenter of the US energy industry is far ahead of number two, New York City with 7.6 million sq. ft. under construction. Dallas is number four with 7.5 million sq. ft. Much of the growth in Texas over the last few years has been spawned by the “shale revolution.”

But the layoff announcements in the oil-and-gas sector are hailing down on the industry.

Weatherford International – headquartered in Houston – announced last week, after reporting a quarterly loss of $475 million, that it was axing 5,000 employees, or 8.9% of its global workforce, to save $350 million per year. Yesterday, Halliburton announced 6,400 job cuts, on top of the 1,000 announced in December. Baker Hughes, which is being acquired by Halliburton, announced 7,000 job cuts. In January, Schlumberger announced 9,000 layoffs. This brings the layoff announcements of the four largest oil-field services companies to 28,400. It’s all about cash flow, now that pricing chaos has swept over the once flush industry.

Oil majors and smaller companies have chimed in with their own layoffs. Privately held companies might quietly proceed with cuts. And many of these folks would have needed some office space.

 

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