US crude reserves ready to flow if Gustav hits

29 August 2008 23:06  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is at 90% capacity and can quickly supply crude oil to refineries if Hurricane Gustav knocks out Gulf area oil production assets, federal energy officials said on Friday.

 

Kevin Kolever, assistant secretary at the Department of Energy (DOE), said the US has 707m bbl of oil in reserve at the four SPR storage sites in Texas and Louisiana.

 

When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita knocked out almost all offshore oil production in the US Gulf region in August and September of 2005, the federal government released SPR oil supplies in order to keep those US refineries not damaged by the storms adequately supplied with crude.

 

“The SPR can release oil at the rate of 4.4m barrels a day,” Kolever said, “which is more than three times the rate of crude production from the Gulf.”

 

“We are better able than ever before to respond quickly to the loss of Gulf crude production,” he said.  Kolever is responsible for electricity and energy reliability at the department.

 

In the wake of the 2005 Gulf hurricanes, two of the four SPR storage sites were rendered inoperable due to flooding, infrastructure damage or power loss, but the other two storage centres remained operational.

 

The SPR storage sites are at Bryan Mound on the Texas Gulf coast about 50 miles (80km) southwest of Galveston, at Big Hill in eastern Texas, West Hackberry in western Louisiana and Bayou Choctaw in eastern Louisiana.

 

Big Hill and West Hackberry were in the direct path of Hurricane Rita in late September 2005 and were without electric power for as long as a week.

 

Kolever said the SPR sites also have been improved with back-up power systems and other redundancies.

 

Speaking at a press conference detailing pre-storm preparations, Kolever said that natural gas, crude oil and refined products pipelines along the hurricane-threatened coast also are better prepared to withstand storm impacts and recover quickly.

 

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By: Joe Kamalick
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