Martial law proclaimed in the city of New Orleans, Bush back in the WH, expect soon a speech from him saying we will be tough, even in these trying circumstances. Will our Commander-In-Chief order looters to be shot, don't want to see property of business and companies stolen, when the local law enforcement and NG units are saving lives.

George will restore order in a state where chaos is wrought by the disaster Katrina. No one talks about the unpreparedness of the Gulf coast states, and the funds taken away because of the Iraq adventure.

New Orleans -- Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living.

100 Dead in One Mississippi County
One Mississippi county alone said its death toll was at least 100, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.

Several victims in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment building, which collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.

And it is difficult to get a perspective here...so this is helpful.

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

Power prices are closely linked to those of natural gas. The US has seen an unprecedented bomm in gas-fired power plants in the last 15 years, and the marginal price of power is largely set by that of gas-fired plants: to simplify, oal and nuclear are cheaper and always produce (and their producers will now get windfalls), but the market for power clears when enough gas-fired plants produce the rest of what's needed.

Gas fired plants were competitive with coal with "normal prices" for natgas, i.e. 2-3$/mbtu, the historical norm until a few years ago. Natural gas is now at ABOVE 11$/mbtu, i.e. 4 times higher than what was expected only a few years ago.

You cna expect retail prices of electricity to shoot up by 50-100% in the next few months (there is some lag due to inertia in price formulas, long term contracts with fixed prices, and regulatory hurdles) - or a California-like crisis if retial prices are blocked while production costs skyrocket.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The Financial Times Deutschland refrains from any commentary about the human costs of the hurricane and focuses on the economic impact it will have on oil supplies. "For the already-strained global energy market, Katrina is a small nightmare: The huge world-wide demand for oil has left producers and workers pushing their limits of capacity. If production platforms and refineries on the Gulf of Mexico have to shut down, the supply holes will not be easy to fill." Even if the current projects of the economic impact of Katrina are exaggerated, one thing is clear, the paper says. In the end, the storm will have proven "the vulnerability of the oil-dependent world economy."

Since that is very much fuelled by cheap energy prices in the USA encouraging the use of fossil fuels, should we be so sympathetic to the US economy now it is literally reaping the whirlwind?

In addition, most of the town now devastated were built on the coast after the normally protecting flora had been removed - all those pesky mangrove swamps had a purpose. Still the states were too greedy for the money from the offshore casinos to stop the ravagin of the shoreline and construction on it. Add into that the extensive systems of levee and canal systems that exacerbated the problems of coastal erosion. Then throw in the failure of the national government to raise the protective barriers for the historical cities to maintain their establihed levels, let alone take account of increased sea levels associated with the melting of the icecaps and the disaster in New Orleans was not only predicatble but was inevitable.

I am sympathetic to the 62% of the householders who were too poor to afford flood insurance but quite frankly should they have been allowed to build on land that was it was inevitable would flood? Should we now bail out the US and help those poor, mostly black, residents who both state and federal governments condemned to live in "houses built on sand"? When the government of Banglasesh, one of the poorest on Earth, can bult emergency flood refuges for its coastal residents in danger from the effects of monsoon surges, why could not the richest provies such structures in the local communities most at risk?

We have also had macho nonsense from the Governor of Mississippi and the Mayor of New Orleans about "rebuilding bigger and better". What of course they do not mean is that they will re-establish the natural barriers to coastal erosion and work with nature rather than trying to fight it with increasingly futile technologies. Maybe it takes a disaster to kick the US into action. uite frankly the problems that you will have with pump prices are long overdue. Concentrating a high proportion of refineries on this vulnerable coast was asking for trouble. About one tenth of capacity will be knocked out for several weeks which will of course reduce demand for crude oil. The world price may very well fall as the US is incapable of converting it to final product while the pump price will rise to near European levels but without the income to the government.

The tragedy is not the destruction of property or the effect on the economy, as always it is that the poor and ignored are the worst affected.

I've been saying for a while now that the situation is tight, and that an external shock or disruption could trigger a nasty crisis, and here we have a mostly unexpected shock which on its own causes majot damage, but whose impact could be magnified horribly by the background situation.

I am gettign seriously scared.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

While so many of our National Guard units are in Iraq..with their amphibious vehicles..more good planning.

Bush is supposed to be finally meandering his way back to Washington tomorrow afternoon to sit in a planning session on what to do..he's just a bit goddamn late.  Then he's planning on I guess flying over the areas on Friday?

I'm to tired to write anymore and am going to get some sleep ..if bush can sleep I should be able to, right.

"People never do evil so throughly and happily as when they do it from moral conviction."-Blaise Pascal

Have you heard of the Hamburg Flood of 1962? 200km fast Storm. abut 310 dead - over 60.000 lost their roof.

http://www.saevert.de/2sturmflut1962.htm here are some meteorological information on that, little flood, which hit a town of over a million.

But guess what, we had a competend man in charge. He became later Chancellor - Helmut Schmidt.
He had read his Schimmelreiter

Sorry for the rant. But not everything was invented in America, is bigger in America or is more painful in America. We do know how to distinguish and we are with you in your pain.

I sincerely hope all your and all of your friends loved once are save and sound and I pray that the mess can be cleared up quickly.

Henry Hub is already back up and pumping like crazy.  Looks like some are pulling out of storage early to make up for the shortfall in USGC offshore production.

Lots of good info at:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/special/eia1_katrina.html

Before I go on, I want to emphasize that this is not some kind of "garden variety" natural disaster like the flooding in Germany and Switzerland, the forest fires in Portugal...etc.

I'm an American living in Europe, and I have been gently informed by people here that they are quite aware of the American tendency to see everything from the US lense, which is that everything is "the greatest" (the biggest, the baddest, add your adjective here). Switzerland just had a monsoon like rain for two days here, and whole villages were wiped out (and still being dug out a week later). Portugal and Spain have been having fires all spring and summer. That's not "garden variety"...that's heavy, major league shit. I do get your concern about N.O., and share it. But if you seek sympathy from Europeans, I think you need to be aware of how they might be feeling about the environmental challenges they face, and especially if you say the US pain is worse than theirs...you will get pissed off responses. It all sucks, brother...no one escapes Mother Nature's wrath

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

Katrina shifted a section of the bridge between Grand Isle and Port Fourchon.

Why does this matter?

Oil Artery Clog Could Impact U.S. (2003)

Eighteen percent of the entire nation's energy supply depends on a deteriorating, narrow two-lane road surrounded by water in South Louisiana.

This is the southernmost stretch of Louisiana Highway 1, providing the only land-based access to Port Fourchon, which supports 75 percent of all the deepwater oil and gas production in the Gulf, according to the LA 1 Coalition, comprised of private and public stakeholders intent on saving and improving the roadway.

The Port also is the site of the booster pumps that carry crude oil from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) to underground salt dome storage areas in Galliano, along Highway 1.

Even on a good day, water laps close to the edges of this vital strip of concrete roadway, which not so long ago was surrounded by marshland. Besides its crucial role in the country's energy supply, the highway serves as the hurricane evacuation route for residents in southern Lafourche Parish and Grand Isle, as well as 6,000 offshore oil and gas employees.

Today, it's a sitting target for the next big hurricane, which can strike at any time during the annual June 1 to November 30 season.

REMARKS FOR THE HONORABLE NORMAN Y. MINETA SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION - MAY 19, 2005

This small and vulnerable road is the only access route to Port Fourchon - a port that supports close to one-fifth of the Nation's oil and gas refining capacity and nearly 25 percent of Louisiana's commercial fishing catch.

Port Fourchon has expanded dramatically in the last 25 years - from 25 acres in 1980 to over 700 acres in 2005. And estimates project that the truck traffic alone on Route 1 will grow by more than 40 percent through 2010.

It is clear that a two-lane road that floods at the sight of rain is no longer adequate to service this vital Gulf port.
(...)

But the only way that these maintenance materials and equipment can make their way to Port Fourchon in the first place is on trucks traveling on LA 1. So when a storm or an accident renders this road impassable, it disrupts operations on the offshore rigs, slowing down oil and gas production and service to maintain the integrity of our pipelines.

If LA 1 is impassible, it also halts shrimp and oysters shipments to restaurants across America.

I also have to say that placing blame or comparing disasters strikes me as plain distasteful this morning. A city of 500,000 people has been trashed. Water up to 20 feet deep fills 80% of the city, the water is filled with sewage, toxic chemicals, dead bodies, debris, snakes and probably alligators as well.

I have seen video of major highway bridges that have collapsed, an oil platform that broke loose and is wedged under a highway bridge, casinos built in floating barges that are sitting on dry land, either on someone's house or perhaps the local food store. This is infrastucture stuff that will take months to fix. And if the infrastructure is trashed, the economic toll is huge. So where do people go to work when the town is destroyed? Where do they live? Who feeds them? The economic impact is more than the price of energy.

Global warming- yes that probably increased this storm, but any hurricane that sits over the Gulf of Mexico feeds off the warm water, this is not a fluke occurance, just a combination of bad circumstances.

The levees in NO are under the authority of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and planned work on the system has been underfunded by the Bush Junta since 2001 (no link, but I found the links on Daily Kos last night). So blame Bush for that, and blame Bush for lack of better planning.

But don't blame the US alone for global warming, cause evryone has pitched in on that cause. And don't compare disasters, cause they all suck.

Geopolitical Diary: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005
August 31, 2005 02 55  GMT

Hurricane Katrina rotated back onto radar again Tuesday. On Aug. 29, we had reached the conclusion that Katrina's impact was geopolitically non-critical; the information that we were seeing indicated the effect was limited. In retrospect, the fact was that we were not receiving much information at all. We took the relative silence as an indication of limited damage. Put simply, we assumed that there would be loud noises associated with disaster.

In fact, Louisiana -- and parts of Mississippi as well -- had returned to a pre-industrial stage. There were few to zero electromagnetic communications. Under those conditions, information normally would spread by physical transport -- humans moving around. But humans were not moving around in the hurricane zone Monday. Roads were impassable. Boats were dangerous. Walking was slow, if possible at all. Information, in other words, was locked down.

The situation did not improve much Tuesday, but some information was flowing, gathered primarily by aircraft and some Coast Guard cutters on the river. Information from New Orleans was better, in terms of quality rather than pleasantness. However, information from the rest of the area was sparse, contradictory and ultimately unreliable. By midday Tuesday, we concluded that we did not actually know what the situation was in the disaster zone, particularly south of New Orleans. What information we had was so spotty and contradictory that relying on it was dangerous.

In other words, more than 24 hours after the worst of the hurricane had passed, intelligence could not answer the key questions:

1. Was the Mississippi still fully navigable?
   
2. What was the condition of the port facilities?
   
3. Was the LOOP, the off-loading point for super tankers, functional?
   
4. What was the condition of the oil platforms in the Gulf?

The inability to really begin to answer these questions is the most alarming aspect of the situation. The fact that information is not flowing from the affected areas at all is an indicator of how disrupted the situation is. No one is coming out, and no one really is going in. It does not allow us to draw worst-case conclusions, such as that the Mississippi River is no longer navigable or that the port, LOOP and platforms have been destroyed. At the same time, the fact that information cannot flow out of the area indicates that the damage is extraordinarily severe.

By the end of the day, we began receiving unconfirmed bits of good news. One source reported that the LOOP was relatively undamaged. Another reported that the Mississippi remains passable and that no vessels were sunk and blocking it. No major silting problems had been found. As promising as these reports were, however, they were coming from single rather than multiple sources and they were based on very limited sampling. So, for example, we learned that a Coast Guard cutter, the Sturgeon, was on its way to the LOOP, but not yet there. Rumors are starting to flow, and they are positive -- but not definitive.

What appears to be definitive is that New Orleans ultimately might survive as a city, but that it will not be functioning for a very long time. Patients are being taken out of New Orleans hospitals rather than being taken to those hospitals. Emergency crews are running out of fuel. That is an indication of the degree of system collapse. It is clear that New Orleans will not be supporting a substantial population for quite a while. That means that the labor force of southern Louisiana has been dramatically reshaped -- and that means that the availability or labor has contracted. Indeed, we are prepared to speculate that those who fled from Katrina through southern Louisiana will not be returning for quite a while. That means that personnel to operate key facilities aren't going to be there.

We will certainly know the status of things within 24 more hours. At the very least, aerial surveys and selective landings by helicopter will tell us a great deal about how long it will take for the region to recuperate. We would be very surprised if the truth about the situation on the ground has not emerged by the night of Aug. 31. But the fact is that, extraordinary as it sounds in an advanced industrialized country, there is not yet a clear picture of what happened from New Orleans on south.

U.S.: Floodwaters Hamper Hurricane Relief
August 31, 2005 14 13  GMT

On Aug. 31, floodwaters continued to hamper relief and damage assessment efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with Port Fourchon, the focal point of petroleum efforts in the Gulf, being particularly difficult to reach. All but one road leading in and out of New Orleans has been completely submerged by floodwater, including the rail yard.

U.S.: One Of 11 Refineries Resumes Operations
August 31, 2005 14 12  GMT

As of 9 a.m. local time, only one of the 11 refineries that shut down operations as Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans has restarted normal operations, leaving approximately 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity offline. At least 2.6 million customers lack power, which has caused three major internal oil transport and distribution lines -- the Colonial Pipeline, the Capline and the Plantation Pipeline -- to remain in shutdown mode.

American tourists do feel a bit uncomfortable in their approach to Amsterdam Airport: "Welcome ladies and gentlemen. We'll shortly be landing at Schiphol Airport, 15 feet below sea level."

The Dutch do fear the onslaught of rising sea level as predicted by global warming and the melting glaciers. But after the 1953 spring tide storm disaster in their southern province of Zeeland, the Dutch rebuild all their dikes to a higher level and the immense structures to withstand all storms for a thousand years, statistically.

The design of dikes has been unchanged for centuries, and only recently has seen a first failure of a sliding dike, due to ... drought! The Dutch design of dikes can also be witnessed in France, Normandy, from centuries ago.

Emblem of Zeeland Province

Coastal Guide to the Netherlands
World Atlas

To battle the rising tide - a political lesson from the Dutch:
resistance, determination and invest in a plan.  

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Some Port Fourchon docks to reopen today

By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer

At Port Fourchon, Louisiana’s sprawling oilfield service port just west
of Grand Isle, storm surge pushed water 10 feet high through the docks
and warehouses, according to Port Director Ted Falgout.

He said some docks will reopen today, as oil companies attempt to
begin re-staffing offshore facilities, but the supply line to the coast for
truck traffic has been severed.

“Vessels are now moving in and out of the port, but our inland supply
chain through Bayou Lafourche is blocked by several sunken vessels and
powerlines and bridges that can’t function without electricity,”
Falgout said.

“I camped out in our administrative offices and it was quite a ride,”
he said. “We are utilizing our airport in Galliano as a heliport for
impacted companies.

“Vessels are now moving in and out of the port, but our inland supply
chain through Bayou Lafourche is blocked by several sunken vessels and
powerlines and bridges that can’t function without electricity.”

Staff writer Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mersmia@cox.net

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/

Newest (and very informative and very scary) report from an anonymous insider

Posted by Prof. Goose in Supply/Production
Wed Aug 31 at 11:35 AM EST

This is from an oil industry insider I consider quite credible.  She was definitely right about everything in her last post.  If she's right about this one, we may finally start to get a true picture of what's going on.  All below the fold.

There are MANY production platform missing (as in not visible from the air). This means they have been totally lost. I am talking about 10's of platforms, not single digit numbers. Each platform can have from 4 to 100+ wells on it. Most larger ones have 20-30 wells in this area, with numerous caisson wells. They are on their sides, on the bottom of the gulf - they will likely be left as reef material, provided we can get permission. MMS regulations require us to plug each of the wells that were on these platforms - HUGE cost now, as the platforms are gone... Hopefully, MMS will grant `abandon in place' status for these wiped out structures.

We also set individual wells as satellites and pipe them back to existing platforms. These stand-alone wells are called caisson wells. 90% of those in the storm path are bent over, rendering them a total loss, We would have to remove the existing bent structure and drill a new well, as bent pipe is basically unusable.

We utilize platforms as gathering hubs. We pipe the raw oil/water to them and then send it on for separation, or separate it there and send finished oil on. Damage to a hub means everything going to the hub is offline indefinitely. There are +/- 15 HUBS missing. MISSING!! As in we cannot find them from the air.

Thus even if the wells feeding the hub are ok, we have nowhere to pump the oil to...

The jackup drilling rigs appear to be in various stages of damage, but most rode the storm out with minimal problems. However, each of them has shifted position.

When we jack the rig up, it is carefully positioned directly over the well slot where we are working. The derrick has rails that allow us to slide it in 4 directions to get the derrick directly over the well or slot. If the rig moves (right/left, or from level to uneven), it has to be jacked back down to the waterline and repositioned with tugboats, then jacked back up. After it is back up and level, the derrick is slid on the 2 sets of rails, and bolted into position over the well or slot again.

Thus we have to reset each of the drilling rigs, which requires getting OUT of the well, tugboats and a move, then getting back into the well. The open hole we have drilled (what is not enclosed in cemented casing) is likely to be lost, and if the wellhead or the casing is bent, then the well will have to be redrilled. This is an exploration setback of at least a month, but we don't yet know the boat situation.

Boats are usually brought into harbor to weather storms. We do not have a boat count yet, but from the initial reports, we may have lost or grounded 30% of the Gulf of Mexico fleet. This means everything will cost more, take longer - repairs, repositioning, everything.

In short, the Gulf area hit by the storm is basically in about the same shape as Biloxi. The damage numbers you have gotten from the government and analysts are, in my opinion, much too low. We are looking at YEARS to return to the production levels we had prior to the storm. The eastern Gulf of Mexico is primarily oil production...

Loss of the MARS platform alone cost us 95,000 barrels a day for a year or maybe more.

YEARS, people. I know what this means - hope everyone else gets it too...

Click here to go to an image of a destroyed rig.

The front page of the Houston Chronicle has a rig beached on Dauphin Island. The legs have been sheared off and derrick is missing – thus it is a total loss. This rig was operating in Main Pass (adjacent to Plaquemines Parish), and thus was blown to Alabama and beached.

Technorati Tags: peak oil, oil, katrina, gas prices

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/31/83553/8973#more

Also, I apologize for giving the impression that I was trying to make this a "comparison" about which is "worse" in terms of human tragedy. I certainly did not intend to make this point. I do in fact think 1000s have died. But my main point is that this disaster needs to be understood that it is much larger than any natural disaster in US history. Literally, a city of half a million people might never be habitable again. It is going to do serious damage to the US and the global economy. And I felt as though the media/blogs out and in of the United States have not really picked up on the true gravity of what is occurring and that I wanted to emphasize that.

Secondly, this is a natural disaster.  I don't doubt global warming played into it and bad planning and poor infrastructure certainly didn't help.  But I am very very disappointed to see the tone of this thread.  Blame America for Iraq, for Bush, for being rude selfish twits, for processed cheese food.  But innocent American people are suffering and I find it terribly crass to suggest that if they'd just had Dutch dikes, this would have been avoided.  They didn't, and the people suffering had no f-ing say in what dikes they got.  I find that to be a discussion for another day.  Bragging about how Europe is more competent now comes off as insenstive and tacky.  Bad manners.  Europe probably IS more competent!  But unless you want to use that competence to help those people down there right now it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Try to remember that America wasn't blaming the people of Ache or Turkey etc. when they fell victim to natural disasters.  And gosh, I mean, I say that as someone who gags when I hear our National Anthem or see pickups with Jesus and American flag bumperstickers.  I say that as someone who loathes our leaders and our behavior in the world as much as anyone.  

I guess what I really want to say is that, and perhaps the point of the diary is, this is not just America saying, "Oh, look at me, my problems are worse than yours, waahhh."  Ok?  This isn't us wanting to be the center of attention.  This is f-ing huge.  Oh. My. God. huge.

Anyway.  Sorry for the crybaby tone.  I just found out I have mono.  So go nice on me. ;)

Oh, about the mayor of NO telling people to pray: if I were trapped in NO, you bet I'd be praying.  And I am not even religous.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Slidell is now a wasteland.

New Orleans is now a wasteland.

I have to agree with Poemless that I've been rather disappointed with the tenor of this thread. Maybe the initial title was a bit misstated...and I know that Americans do tend to view the world from their own Amerocentric view. But the tone seemed to move to something else...

So I'm left with this...

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

You can find this story at: href="http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/katrina/stories/083105ccjccwNatHurricane.474680 ea.html"WWL-TV>

This is on top of uncorroborated reports that hundreds may be dead along the Mississippi coast.

Let me see if I can put this into a little perspective...

The New Orleans metro area has a population of over 1,350,000. The Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula metro area has a population of over 250,000.

So that leaves us with a population of something of the order of Vienna. While some may grouse at the comparison, Vienna gave the world the waltz, while New Orleans gave the world jazz...each of us can choose which is personally more satisfying...but we can all agree that both are contributions to humanity that are now PART of our humanity.

So...

Imagine tomorrow that some one thousand die in Vienna.

Imagine then that Vienna has to evacuate. I'm talking about everyone...EVERYONE leaving the city.

Imagine that a public health emergency has been declared in the region around Vienna...the fear is that disease will take other lives.

Imagine that most of those people will not be able to return for at least four months...probably up to one year.

Imagine that some are seriously questioning the logic of rebuilding Vienna. It's on the Danube...the existing defensive system didn't work even though it was one of the most extensive in the continent, so why rebuild?

That's what is happening right now.

I understand that there is a lot of anger at the US. Hell, I'm angry at the Bush administration. I don't agree with most of the policies of the Bush administration...Hell...I was so frickin angry at Bush's press conference that I could have spit fire. The federal government has failed in this effort while the Louisiana authorities have really done more could have been expected. I've seen policemen begging on TV for more assistance...they are simply overwhelmed.

But don't take it out on New Orleans...

New Orleans has been bleeding over the last two days. I just can't imagine that this is the same great city that I cared about and dreamed about. I listen to press conferences that the governor and mayor give...they are near the breaking point...you can hear it in their voices.

This is a major city on the verge of the breaking point.

This is not the time.