In the chaos of the worst natural disaster of our time, the remarkable Houston community provided extraordinary relief for tens of thousands of New Orleans area evacuees and, in so doing, provided a substantial part of the calming effect that steadied jittery economic markets still attempting to stabilize from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
First, the economic update. As the evacuation of New Orleans picked up steam on Friday, crude-oil and gasoline futures fell sharply as the federal government and the International Energy Agency arranged to release almost 2 million of barrels of oil daily to cover shortages caused by Hurricane Katrina. The short-term supply relief drove benchmark light, sweet crude oil October futures contracts down nearly $2 to $67.57 a barrel on the Nymex Exchange. Earlier posts on the developing economic effects of Katrina over the past week are here, here, here, here and here.
In addition to the drop in crude futures, Nymex gasoline futures for October fell 22.53 cents to finish at $2.1837 a gallon and the October contracts fell another 23 cents in overnight trading to end at $2.2295 a gallon. Also, Nymex heating oil futures for October traded down 10.74 cents to $2.0911 a gallon.

As noted in this post yesterday, both the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port — a key Gulf port for oil supertankers — and the huge Plantation Pipe Line — which transports fuel to much of the Southeast — regained power late Thursday and were resuming operations. Moreover, some other fuel pipelines began restarting operations Friday, although supplies of product are way down after the storm knocked out nine Gulf Coast refineries, disrupted gasoline pipelines, and shut down 90% of the oil production and about 80% of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf region generates about 30% of U.S. oil production and about 25% of its natural gas production.
On the downside, additional information on damage to offshore oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico continued to filter in to the markets. The American Petroleum Institute announced that the storm had damaged or displaced about 60 Gulf oil platforms and drilling rigs, and about 30 of those are total losses. A company breakdown on the ownership of the lost rigs and platforms is not yet available. James Hamilton has his usual insightful thoughts on what all this may mean for the overall economy going forward.
Meanwhile, Houston continued to exhibit the remarkable nature that has made this city a comfortable home for my family and me over the past 33 years as city and county officials essentially opened the huge Reliant Park Convention and Sports Complex as massive shelters for an estimated 30,000 evacuees from New Orleans. Officials currently estimate that another 70,000 Gulf Coast area evacuees are staying in the Houston area with relatives or friends, in hotels, or in smaller shelters. The vast majority of these people need financial assistance, and many need medical care. The Houston Chronicle is providing excellent coverage of the situation, as are many Houston-area bloggers, a good number of which are listed in this post of Chronicle business blogger Loren Steffy. BlogHouston.net, the Lone Star Times,Off the Kuff, Eric Berger and many other local blogs have also been providing outstanding coverage of the Houston relief effort.
As bad as this disaster has been, it is difficult to imagine how bad it would have been had Houston’s amazing facilities not been available as a transition point for the Gulf Coast region evacuees. Reliant Park is a massive facility that can accomodate huge numbers of people, and it is located near one of the world’s finest medical centers, Houston’s Texas Medical Center. As large as the loss of life has been in the Gulf Coast region to date, it would have been far larger had Houston’s amazing facilities not been available to accomodate the stream of evacuees.
Within Reliant Park, the Astrodome is filled with approximately 15,000 people, while officials have opened up the the adjacent Reliant Arena and the Reliant Park Convention Center to accomodate another 15,000 evacuees. On Friday, city officials also opened the massive George R. Brown Convention Center near downtown Houston, which was filled with air mattresses donated by a local sporting goods retailer. As many as 7,000 people could be staying there as of today.
The flow of buses to Houston continued unabated as conditions in Louisiana have worsened. Rather than turn evacuees away, Houston has simply opened up more of its resources to attempt to accomodate them all, and without much assistance from officials who coordinating the exodus from New Orleans. Texas officials have not been able to coordinate the departures or destinations of the buses with Louisiana counterparts and, at this point, Texas officials have no control over what happens with regard to the exodus from New Orleans.
At this point, Houston officials are using the Astrodome as a staging area for newly arriving buses and their passengers. Medical and security personnel greet each bus after it arrives and pre-screen passengers during the six mile trip to the George R. Brown Convention Center. Meanwhile, Texas Medical Center hospitals equipped and staffed a medical clinic at the Brown Center to handle the larger number of elderly and ill arrivals, and a group of Houston churches are organizing to raise about $4 million for a month’s worth of meals and to provide training for volunteer servers at Reliant Park and the Brown Center.
Folks, this is going to be one wild ride. Stay tuned.