Ain't No Meter Maid

Oh my.

Deja Vu all over again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But the news/projections are looking tough as Rita turns to Category 4.

Bloomberg:

"Rita is developing into our worst-case scenario," said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. "This is headed right into our other major refining center just after all the damage done to facilities in Louisiana. From an energy perspective it doesn't get any worse than this."

Part of the problem is this:



Note that there is more refining done in Texas than Louisiana. And the fact that there are a number of oil and natural gas pipeline heads located in the area:




Here's a wonderful article for we novices on oil in the gulf....excerpt:

If the storm takes the current projected path it will slam square into land just southwest of Galveston, Texas and possibly plaster Houston and nearby communities with that savage northeast quadrant. This is the busiest port in the US and the second busiest by tonnage in the world. Key to this essential flow of goods is the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay. Roughly a million barrels of oil, of the 20 million bbl/day the US uses flows through this port and two of the four largest refineries in the nation are located there. In addition everything from food shipments to chemicals are moved, stored, and some even made in the area.

And a final bit of bad news. With the damage having been done by Katrina not anything close to repaired, and with the Europeans already shipping slack to the U.S. to help out, petroleum supplies in the U.S. are "on a [even sharper] knife's edge"

If the hurricane turns more north toward Houston/Galveston, watch what happens to gasoline prices as the opportunistic energy companies and distributors take advantage....yet again. And watch the Bush administration sit on their thumbs counting the future GOP campaign contributions.