Ike came ashore just after 2am CDT as a strong Category 2 hurricane. Even as it moves inland, the storm is expected to maintain hurricane strength through early afternoon.Damage wreaked by wind and water will be significant. It'll be weeks before we know just how bad it is.
Yesterday's post referred to Ike's potential impact on the oil-and-gas industry, using numbers cited in media reports. Since then, I've done some digging for more specifics.
I like specifics. Pictures are even better, because they help me wrap my pedestrian brain around dry statistics and featureless factoids.
Every time a big storm percolates in the Gulf of Mexico, we hear about the danger it poses to oil platforms -- but how many platforms are out there? And where are they?
Nearly 4,000 platforms, as it turns out, stand (or float) right in the path of hurricanes like Ike.We're all familiar with the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve," the emergency fuel supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy. Ok, so it's a political football -- but beyond that, where and how is the oil stored?
The SPR is housed in artificial caverns carved from salt domes, as deep as 3,000 feet underground. This graphic shows the four SPR storage locations, along with related refineries and pipelines.
The reasons for building these facilities in this area are as obvious as they are sound, but again, this vital complex sits squarely in the path of Rita, Katrina, Ike and the like.Knowing all this, then, human nature begs the next question: What's the worst that could happen?
In an attempt to answer that, energy-investment gurus put their heads together with severe-weather experts and plotted the path of "The Ultimate Storm."
No, we're not looking at Ike -- notice that in the worst case, the storm doesn't make landfall until it slams into the Texas coast. Without dry land to sap its energy, such a system would continue to strengthen into a devastating Category 4 or 5 hurricane.So while we don't yet know the toll taken by Hurricane Ike, it could've been worse -- much worse.
