Hurricane Rita Threatens Gulf Refineries
By Kéllia Ramares
Special for Global Public Media
September 21, 2005— At 4 pm CDT today, the National Hurricane Center issued an advisory that Hurricane Rita had become a Category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds near 165 mph and higher gusts. Category 5 is the highest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Hurricane Katrina also reached Category 5 status in the Gulf, before making landfall as a Category 4. Latest GOES-East Satellite image of Rita. (Image updated every half hour). Three hours later, the NHC called Rita, with a minimum central pressure of 898 MilliBars (26.52 inches), the third most intense hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin. (The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm).
Katrina devastated towns such as Venice, Louisiana and Gulfport, Mississippi, that support the offshore oil and gas industry by providing homes for workers and their families and supplies and spare parts for offshore platforms and their crews. The ability to restore production damaged by Katrina is being severely hampered by the scattering of the oil industry workers who formerly did post-storm repair work.
Chris Skrebowski, editor of the Petroleum Review, a prestigious British oil industry journal said that he could not immediately think of occasions where the industry’s supporting system of coastal towns were wiped out by a hurricane.
“There may have been limited instances in the Far East, when typhoons have taken out areas, but I can’t actually think of any example. So yes, this is a new and rather unpleasant phenomenon.”
New, but ready to be repeated this weekend in another important region of the Gulf’s oil and gas industry.
On Wednesday evening, Hurricane Rita was on course to make landfall south of the island city of Galveston on Saturday morning. By that time, wind shear and passage over relatively cooler pockets of the Gulf, may push the hurricane back to Category 4. But all that means is that cities near and on the Central Texas coast, which are home to about 25% of
Bill Greehey, Chairman and CEO of Valero Energy Group, the largest refiner in the
Mandatory evacuations have been ordered from New Orleans, Louisiana to Corpus Christi, Texas. More than one million people are leaving, including Katrina survivors, who are being moved from shelters in Texas to Arkansas and Tennessee. The twin nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project will be shut down about seven hours before Rita makes landfall.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina has surpassed 1,000.
