Daily Archives: September 28, 2005

Guaranteeing expensive natural disasters

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flood insurance.gifIn his Wall Street Journal ($) Business World column today, Holman Jenkins picks up on a theme of several previous posts (here, here, here and here) that point out that governmental policies that distort risk analysis virtually guarantees that natural disasters in hurricane-prone areas will be increasingly costly:

Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu offered a perfect expression on CNN on Sunday of where the new blank-check compassion is leading us: “Wolf, poor families were crushed. Middle-income families are staggering. And wealthy families have been just punched in the stomach. It is going to take a huge national effort for us to realize the importance of this Gulf Coast region.”
To wit, everyone must be restored to their previous status and possessions, or better, at taxpayer expense.

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Rita hammers offshore production facilities

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rig offshore3.jpgThis Financial Times article reports that preliminary assessments of the damage that Hurricane Rita caused to offshore oil and gas drilling and production facilities reflect that the damage is greater any other storm in history.
Rita’s path — which was west of the path of Hurricane Katrina last month — tore through an area of the Gulf of Mexico that contained a large amount of exploratory rig activity. Given the apparent damage to the rigs, the biggest impact from the storm may be that it will exacerbate an already tight market for rigs in the region. As a sign of just how precious rigs are becoming to the market, The Woodlands=-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp., one of the biggest U.S. independent exploration and production companies, raised eyebrows in the energy industry earlier this week by committing to a rig six years in advance.
Oh, how times have changed in the exploration and production business.