LOOP Could Shut Down If Heavy Oil From Slick Reaches It - Supplies 50% Of Refining Capacity

Oil gushing from a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico could force closure of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port next week, authorities said Friday.

The port, known as LOOP, is a platform off the Louisiana coast about 80 miles southwest of New Orleans. It is one of the leading facilities for imported oil, handling up to 1.2 million barrels a day and feeding half the nation's refinery capacity. Tankers that are too large to enter the Mississippi River pull up to the facility and hook into a pipeline system that sends their oil to onshore refineries, including those lining the Mississippi north of New Orleans.

Current projections show the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon disaster could reach the port next week, said Sale Sittig, director of the Louisiana Oil Terminal Authority, an oversight body for LOOP. "It definitely could be shut down if the heavy oil gets in the vicinity of the platform," Sittig said.

The Coast Guard would determine whether LOOP would be shut down. The port has never closed for an extended period since its inception in the 1970s, though it has closed briefly for hurricanes. A long closure almost certainly would send gasoline prices higher, Sittig said.

EDIT

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/gulf_oil_spill_could_reach_lou.html

nt

the hoopleheads go-juice pumps going dry.

Can you imagine the chaos when the 'No Gas' signs start to pop up.

Been there,done that,and t-shirt is LONG gone.

during the first oil crush.

Long lines at the stations. The frequent "no gas" signs. And the countless incidents of fights over gas, over people cutting in line and just because people were generally pissed off.

I, being 12 at the time, sold coffee to those waiting in line. I made a tidy sum.

My brother got into a fight while waiting in line. A guy cut in front of him, my brother got out of his car and confronted him. The guy clipped my bro in the mouth and broke his tooth, my brother broke the other guys nose.

Both left, neither got gas.

That was one long hot summer.

In the 70's, people knew it was a geopolitical disruption we just had to work through.

When the next discontinuity occurs, once it sinks into the lumpenprole that intermittent go-juice supply is a permanent condition, combined with today's sense of entitlement . . .

The parents we had at that time were a product of the depression (via their parents) /WW II/Korean War. Americans are a lot different today.

In retrospect, probably should not have joked about nuclear war. Thing is, in modern America, for some people once peak oil starts to really bite, they will think it is Armageddon. And if you have to commute 40 mi. one way for your rice bowl, it very well could be.

I live in Georgia and we get our gas from the gulf. There are (I think) two parallel pipelines that run from the gulf East North East providing gas to the entire Southeast. When they shut down because of Hurricanes it can get ugly fast. One reason is because the metropolitan Atlanta area has a "boutique" fuel to minimize pollution. The last time the refineries shut down they were scheduled to make the Atlanta blend and ship it to us. I think they only make it about 2-3 days every 2 weeks so the most we have is 2 plus weeks in storage. When they shut down we were down to a few days and there was none for us in the pipeline. We did without while other cities had plenty.

If the refineries don't get their oil we won't get our gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_pipeline

One of the other major complaints I have about our 'free market' driven complex industrial society.

No redundancy. No profit in it.

Possible boring story here I'll try to make it short:

About 1990-1992 I had a job with a bank (C&S) * quoting loan rates to various companies. Colonial Pipeline was one of the companies. My job was to quote how much it cost the bank to borrow the money and the lending officer would add on a risk factor and profit. I never knew what they did for a living.

In Colonial Pipeline's defense, the pipeline wasn't the problem with hurricane Ike but the storage was. I don't know who owns the storage. If they had more storage we would have been OK but nobody wants to pay for more storage.

* We're called Bank of America now but we went through C&S Sovran and NationsBank to get there.

Runnin' around on fossil fuel
But now I see what I was doin'
Was drivin' down the road to ruin

The late, semi-great Johnny Paycheck

(Chorus)
Damn this traffic jam
How I hate to be late
It hurts my motor to go so slow
Damn this traffic jam
Time I get home my supper'll be cold
Damn this traffic jam

Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It took fifteen minutes
go three blocks
Just in time to stand in line
With a freeway looking
like a parking lot

- Chorus -

Now I almost had a heart attack
Looking in my rear view mirror
I saw myself the next car back
Looking in the rear view mirror
'Bout to have a heart attack
I said

- Chorus -

Now when I die I don't want no coffin
I thought about it all too often
Just strap me in behind the wheel
And bury me with my automobile

- Chorus -

Damn...

Now I used to think that I was cool
Running around on fossil fuel
Until I saw what I was doing
Was driving down the road to ruin