Ike repercussions

If you read Mostly Cajun, you know that he works for a pipeline outfit. I bet he's on the job this morning, helping to deliver energy to the rest of the nation. His post from yesterday says:

The plant had water inside my switchgear room. That makes me glad we made the decision to shut the power off before we left. Tomorrow we get to do an inspection and some tests and see about turning the place back on.

As I was surfing this morning, I stumbled on a site called The Oil Drum, where the author looks at the implications of a 10 day refinery/pipeline shutdown. It ain't pretty. It underscores the absolute need to have more refining capacity in this nation and have it spread around so that we don't have any catastrophic shutdowns during a natural or man-made disaster.

One graphic at the site shows just how dependant we are on the Gulf Coast for our energy resources.



That's a map of the Colonial Pipeline Company main pipeline. It runs up the east coast and serves the fine people from Texas to New Jersey. The problem this morning is that it starts in Texas and Texas is shut down this morning. No fuel is going to flow though that pipe today, maybe not tomorrow.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were refineries at every juncture of that pipeline? Where product could be pumped in both directions? Where a shutdown in one area of the country didn't translate into problems for the other parts of the country?

This country needs more refining capacity and we need it dispersed.

Drill now, drill everywhere.