Oil Cos Worried At Growing Number Of 100-Year Hurricanes - NYT

[hatrack]

Around the world, offshore oil and gas platforms are generally built to survive without serious damage a so-called 100-year storm - a hurricane so powerful that it typically occurs only once every hundred years. Hurricane Ivan roared through the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, generating the highest waves ever recorded there in a storm considered likely to occur only once every 2,500 years. Given the scale of the hurricane, it was inevitable that it would wreak havoc in the gulf, America's biggest energy-producing region, uprooting miles of underwater pipelines, destroying platforms and crimping production for months.

But when industry officials, engineers and oceanographers gathered at an American Petroleum Institute conference in Houston in July to discuss ways of improving the gulf's infrastructure, they expected to have plenty of time to work on the problems. Then Katrina struck. "We're seeing more 100-year events happening more often, even every few years," said Jafar Korloo, who has designed, engineered and managed offshore platforms for Unocal, the oil company recently acquired by Chevron. "The bar has to be higher."

The stakes, too, are higher than before. Older production basins in Texas and Oklahoma have been on a gradual decline for years; some potential oil-producing regions on land elsewhere in the United States are out of bounds. In the meantime, more oil and gas has been gushing out of the gulf, which was first tapped half a century ago, amounting now to nearly a third of domestic output. And the bulk of that production is concentrated at no more than a couple of dozen platforms, each costing $1 billion to $2 billion.

As the petroleum industry confronts the challenge of recovering as quickly as possible from Katrina, officials are just beginning to assess the bigger, longer-range questions. But clearly, they cannot count on nature being predictable. "Most definitions of a 100-year event were calculated before Ivan and Katrina," said Bob Hamilton, a vice president at the Woods Hole Group, an ocean engineering group in Massachusetts. "At this point, are the 100-year criteria good enough?"

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/business/15gulf.html

[electropop]

1. It's Karma, baby!

When your industry has opposed any efforts to adapt to the modern reality of Global Warming, you will eventually pay the price (along with everybody else). In fact, it appears that the oil companies may ironically, be among the first to pay. Look at Katrina: in addition to thousands murdered by Bushco, it also caused a lot of damage to oil facilities.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

4. Just what I was thinking

Reaping what you sow.

[Zuni]

2. 100 year is wrong

in 1935, the most powerful recorded hurricane in US History battered the Florida Keys on labor day.

in 1969, Hurricane Camille hit the Gulf Coast with winds reaching as high as 215 mph and 35 foot storm surges

several times a century, you get a super massive storm that makes landfall in the US.

[Boomer]

7. How often can the industry afford to rebuild

If this new cycle of high activity continues to intensify, just how often can the oil industry rebuild its infrastructure?

What happens if we get an Ivan every other year, and a Katrina-force hurricane every 5 years, wiping out more and more platforms and creating a constant scramble to maintain pipelines?

At some point, the energy costs of getting the oil will outweigh what we recover. Yet another aspect of Peak Oil that is often overlooked. Sure, we have oil, we just can't get to it without spending more than it is worth.

[phantom power]

8. Ivan and Katrina were pretty much the same storm.

Ivan lost a bit more energy prior to landfall, and missed New Orleans by a wider margin, but fundamentally, they were the same class of storm.

We can expect one every year.

As you say, there's a pretty sharp limit on how often a civilization can afford to rebuild it's infrastructure. Especially a civilization like ours, whose economy is 8 trillion dollars in debt.

I think part of the answer is increased engineering standards. All structures on the Gulf coast, and offshore (oil rigs, etc), simply have to be engineered to withstand sustained 200mph winds, and the corresponding storm surges, waves, etc.

I'm very curious to find out if anybody is actually planning to increase the engineering standards.

The other part of the answer is that probably we need to have less population near the coastlines. Only structures that really need to be right on the coast should be build there. Ports, marinas, etc.

[Boomer]

9. We have a poor track record in good planning

>> The other part of the answer is that probably we need to have less population near the coastlines. Only structures that really need to be right on the coast should be build there. Ports, marinas, etc. <<

Unfortunately, I think the current mindset will continue until the coastal infrastructure is reduced to rubble, the majority of residents become homeless evacuees and our economy collapses.

[phantom power]

10. I think you are right.

People will start rebuilding, assuming that Katrina was a fluke. This will continue until the next cat-5 hurricane flattens it all again. If I'm right about anything, we won't have to wait very long for that to happen.

I hope that then people will begin to internalize the fact that the old ways of doing business are no longer viable. But since our country is less and less reality-based each year, maybe we will simply beat ourselves against the same wall over and over, until we are completely reduced to an impoverished 3rd-world country, populated by superstitious peasants.

[tex-wyo-dem]

3. It's called global warming...oh, wait...

that's just junk science...never mind :sarcasm:

[Strelnikov_]

5. Oh . . Gee . . Whoda . . Thunk . . It

As someone working in natural resources engineering, there are a lot of climate related statistics showing deviation from past norms.

Here in Iowa, the peak rainfall rates (12 hr., 24 hr.) over the last 15 years almost appear to be from a separate 'population' from the past data.

I think this also underscores the fallacy of designing critical, extremely expensive, infrastructure assuming that any given year you have a 1% chance of the design being exceeded and therefore a chance of being wiped out.

[NNadir]

6. It merely represents one negative feedback loop with global climate change

Another is that higher temperatures tend to reduce the need for heating.

Of course there are many positive feedback loops as well.

My personal opinion is that to the extent that the oil industry - which is no where near sustainable - is slowed, it is a good thing. People, I think, are seriously thinking about how to conserve. This is a silver lining on the whole affair.