Storms could have been worse, federal government says
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike were the perfect storms that weren’t.
While the two storms hit just 12 days apart and shut off crude oil supplies and refinery production, they did it at a time when gasoline inventories were falling anyway as refiners prepared to switch over to cold-weather blends.
Anyway, it appears only the supplies were impacted, as the industry’s infrastructure survived mostly in tact.
So while much of the south-central U.S.’s petroleum refining capacity remained offline by the middle of last week, refineries in other parts of the nation were able to help take up the slack because they had available capacity.
Also, the federal government stepped in to help – deliveries from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve kept crude oil flowing.
And while wholsale prices for gasoline spiked before the storm hit, they already were headed back the other way toward the end of the week.
Up-to-date information on Hurricane Ike’s impact on U.S. oil infrastructure is available on the EIA Report on Hurricane Impacts on U.S. Energy Website.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment