America's Amazing Sinking Energy Infrastructure - Port Fourchon, LA - Fortune

[hatrack]

EDIT

There are countless more for companies such as Shell (Charts), Chevron (Charts, Fortune 500), and BP (Charts). All told, the pipelines at Fourchon connect to half of the refining capacity in this country. And they're a key stem in a broader branching of pipelines in southern Louisiana, which combine to transport 27 percent of America's oil and 30 percent of its natural gas. If the port seems like a mirage on the edge of the marsh, that may be because its permanence is anything but assured. The port sits in a region that, although it escaped the most cataclysmic destruction of Katrina and Rita, is being ravaged by two slow-moving but equally ruinous phenomena: erosion and the sinking of the land.

Some 25 square miles of Louisiana have been collapsing into the gulf each year for three-quarters of a century. A total of 1,900 square miles, roughly the area of Delaware, disappeared between the 1930s and 2005, and another 217 square miles were pulverized into liquid by Katrina and Rita. And that land loss, says Ted Falgout, who has run Port Fourchon for 28 years, poses a growing threat not only to the people who live here but also to the U.S. energy supply. "We're on a train wreck here," says Falgout. "We have not designed the energy infrastructure - or any infrastructure - ."

The problem afflicts all of southern Louisiana. As land turns to water, it is exposing thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines that were built underground and were not designed to withstand water or waves. "There are places where a pipeline that was laid in marsh, well protected, is now in five or six feet of water - in an open bay that is subject to a vessel coming across and hitting it," says Falgout. "That's the thing that are spending their money on right now. It's so huge that they're just putting out fires."

Most energy and pipeline companies seem loath to discuss the issue, but there are signs of anxiety. "The pipeline companies are very - I don't want to say nervous - they're very concerned," says Clifford Smith, chairman of T. Baker Smith, an engineering firm that has been designing and servicing pipelines in Louisiana since 1913. "We're constantly doing what we call as-builts" - inspections of existing pipelines - "and remedial work," he says. "Accidents are happening because of the changes in topography. It's a big thing."

EDIT

http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/02/magazines/fortune/no_energycrisis.fortune/?postversion=2007080611

[kestrel91316]

1. The wetlands that made south LA build up rather than sink

have been destroyed by the channelization of Big Muddy, loss of sediment inflow, and building the canals that let saltwater into freshwater marshes and killed off all the vegetation.

The wetlands there CAN be restored, but I doubt the oil and gas industry will allow it. They run things down there. They have no one to blame for their fix but themselves.

[madrchsod]

3. actually they want it done.

they need the wetlands to keep their pipes from being exposed and thus losing stability. katrina knocked the crap out of the platforms distribution lines on the seabed and lines on the land. if another storm hits before they can rebuild the lines they will lose there pipelines. it would be a very cold winter in the heartland of the usa

[kestrel91316]

4. They may want it done, now that they see the damage they have

caused to their own infrastructure. They should be made to pay for 100% of the remediation, and ordered to complete the job in 5 years, IMHO. But THAT will never happen. We taxpayers and whatever private charities pitch in will have to foot the bill. The criminals won't pay a dime.

[madrchsod]

2. rebuilding the wetlands/delta would

cost about three or fours months that we are spending in iraq...

the river is the life blood of the this country and without it our nation will whither on the vine