Furthermore shipments of Crude from Mexico and Venezuela was also shut off for about two weeks do to the threat of the Hurricane. Some of the shutdowns only lasted a week, but you still have to consider both the effort to shit them down and the effort to re-start them.
Notice I did NOT say crude was in short supply, what is in short supply is refined products, i.e gasoline and Diesel (as while as Home heating Oil). This will take another two weeks to a month to get back to normal (and remember the same problems occurred as Fay developed, but since it went to Florida and the East Coast the restriction were minimal).
The chief problem with oil today is we no longer have the 5% cushion that existed between Supply and demand all through the 1990s. That cushion kept the price low, for if someone tried to push the price up, the fact you had 5% over production would force the price back down quickly. Since about 2005, the difference between demand and supply has dropped to 1% (and some experts said demand exceeds supply, but the difference is being made up out of inventory). As long as the demand and supply are so close, the price is open to manipulation (Both up and down). You do NOT need the huge inventory needed in 1979 to cause the price of oil to go up, all you have to do is be willing to pay a little extra (or NOT buy at all) to manipulate the price. This is how the speculators did it over the last year or so, and why it dropped. The speculators took the price so high that people stop buying, which caused the price to drop for inventory started to grow (and no one wanted to keep inventory unlike 1979 where the Speculators kept excess oil in inventory as the price went up and up). Right now speculators are bidding the price DOWN and will continue till demand exceeds supply and then it will reverse. I personally think the "correct" price is about $120 a barrel, for at that point the price stalled, peaked to about $150 and then fell back down to about $120. The price has dropped below $120 but then bounced back and then fell again. I suspect manipulation, people bidding low for the same reason they bid high last month, for that was the direction the price seems to be going.
If you study ANY fuel history, unless some Government or other agency sets the price, the price for the fuel is subject to rapid increases and decreases in price. Rockefeller saw this and was the basis of Standard Oil, he set the price for oil, and people would buy from him for given choice between stable, but high prices, and prices that goes up and down frequently, people prefer the former, even if costs them more overall. When Standard oil was broken up you had some rapid increase and decreases in price till the Texas Railroad Commission started to set the price by determining how much oil each Texas oil field could produce. This stabilized price till the US became a Net Oil IMPORTER about 1970. Prices were unstable from 1968 till 1974 when Saudi Arabia through OPEC, started to set world wide oil prices by setting how much oil Arabia would produce (Just like how the Texas Railroad Commission did it for decades). This worked out (Except for a period in the 1980s when Thacher tried to increase the world wide oil market share for North Sea oil, Thacher did this by cutting the price for North Sea oil, till Saudi Arabia had enough and cut their production to set the world wide price of oil BELOW the cost of Britain to pump North Sea oil. After three months of that low price, Saudi Arabia rose the price and Thacher just matched that price, she had learned her lesson).
As to the present problems, you first must understand HOW oil goes where in the US. The biggest shipments is up the Mississippi by barge, this was NOT much affected by the Gustav or Ike. The barges just had to wait north of Barton Rouge both times and then take a day or two to get to the Refineries on the Coast (and many barges rushed down BEFORE both Hurricanes to get loaded up as part of the shut down of those Refineries). Thus the problem of shipping the oil up and down the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers were minimal. New England and New York get their oil from New Jersey Refineries, thus minimal affect. California has its own supply, refineries and distribution system so NOT affected by the Hurricanes, The Northern Plains are slowly switching to Canadian oil (as is the Great Lakes).
Now the pipeline in question had been built in WWII to ship Texas Oil from Texas to the East Coast without having to run German U-boats. With the German U-Boat no longer a problem after 1945 the pipeline was kept both as source of supply and as a backup to tankers. With the expansion of the South after WWII, many of the small outlets built during WWII to keep local politicians happy became the source of refined oil products for the south from Mobil to Norfolk (and DC through DC tends to be closer to the New Jersey Plants). Unlikely the Tankers and Barges that could stay out of the way of Gustav, Ike and Fay, the pipeline is right in the middle. Fay had no affect on it, but given that the pipeline is on the coast Gustav and Ike affected its use. Gustav more then Ike. Do to the pipeline the South has minimal methods to import oil from Tankers or barges (outside the Mississippi valley and is parallel, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway). Thus the pipeline being closed for BOTH Ike and Gustav caused inventories to drop in the South from Alabama to Georgia, the Carolinas and into Virginia. Given that the Pipeline is so reliable, most outlets on the pipeline keep minimal inventory, so the week the pipeline was down for Gustav was enough to drain those Inventories, and the inventories had NOT refilled before Ike force the Pipeline to close again (and for the Refineries in Louisiana and Texas from refining and putting product into the pipeline).
My point is the area where there is a Oil Shortage, that shortage is do to Ike and Gustav. You an NOT shit down that pipeline for two weeks (even if two different weeks separated by a week or two of usage) without running down local inventories. The only way to replenish those inventories, except by the pipeline which will take time, is by over the road tanker and that will cost a lot of money for the tankers have to come from someplace like Mobile which has access to Barge to Tanker shipments to supplement the pipeline. This will continue till the inventory is built back up and that will take a few weeks.
For more on the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee-Tombigbee_WaterwayHere is a NY times article on shipping Gasoline on a Barge from New Jersey to Baltimore, interesting in that Baltimore gets its oil from New Jersey NOT the Texas to New Jersey Pipeline, that is how much oil the south is using MORE today then during WWII:
http://pipeline.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/oil-barges/Article on why Barges are the cheapest method of transportation (Cheaper by far of all other means except pipeline, and then pipelines only for liquid and gaseous items, barges are cheaper for solid items):
http://deltafarmpress.com/news/waterway-agricultural-0825/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
