Market responds to Rita-related damage to Gulf production facilities

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chevron rig.jpgFollowing on this post from yesterday, Chevron Corp.’s announcement that its Typhoon tension leg platform was severed from its moorings by Hurricane Rita and is floating upside down in the Gulf of Mexico dovetailed with the news that natural-gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange skyrocketed 10% to almost $14 per million British thermal units, which is its highest closing on record.
Typhoon2.jpgThus, if it’s going to be a long, cold winter in the U.S. hinterlands this winter, then it’s looking increasingly as if it’s going to be a long, cold, expensive winter.
Natural-gas futures on the Nymex for delivery in October rose $1.251 to $13.907 per million BTUs. The expiration of the October contract at the same time that the delivery point for Nymex futures, Louisiana’s Henry Hub, which has been closed down for the past week, added to the uncertainty and volatility in the market.

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Paul Burka on the Houston evacuation plan

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evacuation5.jpgFollowing on previous posts here and here regarding Houston’s hurricane evacuation plan, Texas Monthly editor and former Houstonian Paul Burka weighs in on the plan in this OpinionJournal op-ed. Mr. Burka does not offer anything new here in terms of a solution, but he does do a good job of framing the key issue:

There is no way that government can assure that the people on the roads are the ones who are in the most danger, those from Galveston and the low-lying areas near Galveston Bay. Common sense needs to be restored to the evacuation process, so that people with the greatest risk of danger will make the decision to leave, and those with the least risk will stay off the roads.

Tory Gattis over at Houston Strategies also has some good thoughts on how to improve the plan.

A key tip for dealing with rattlesnakes

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rattler.jpgOne of the best parts of the Houston Chronicle for many years has been the newspaper’s Hunting and Outdoors section of its sports section. Inasmuch as my reaction to finding a rattlesnake would have been the same as the fellow’s reaction as described in the following Chronicle article, I was glad to learn something from the Chronicle piece about dealing with dead rattlesnakes:

Even a dead rattlesnake can hurt you. Just ask Trey Hanover of College Station.
On Labor Day weekend, Hanover and his father, Tommy Hanover, were working on their deer lease when they killed a big rattler. They shot the snake’s head off with a shotgun and loaded the carcass in the truck to show other hunters on their lease that they needed to be careful.

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Stros close in on another playoff berth

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stros logo6.jpgAfter a 6-3 road trip that included a two–game sweep of the Cardinals, the Stros (87-71) come home for four games with the Cubs (77-81) needing any combination of wins or Phillies (85-74) losses equaling two to achieve the club’s sixth playoff berth in the past nine seasons (the Phillies finish the season with three games in Washington against the 81-78 Nationals). Inasmuch as the Stros have gone a positively unbelievable 72-41 after a miserable 15-30 start to the season, one has to feel good about the Stros’ chances of clinching the playoff berth at this point. However, given this club’s chronic lack of hitting, it is reasonable to hold off celebrating until the final out of the clinching game is officially in the scorebook.

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The Hammer’s indictment

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DeLay6.jpgIn one of the least surprising developments in Texas politics over the past couple of years, a Travis County (Austin area) grand jury on Wednesday charged Houston Congressman and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two political associates — John Colyandro, former executive director of the Texas political action committee that Mr. DeLay helped form, and Jim Ellis, who heads Mr. DeLay’s national political action committee — with criminal conspiracy in an alleged campaign finance scheme that has been under investigation for almost two years. That investigation and Mr. DeLay have been frequent topics on this blog, as posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here reflect. Here is a copy of the indictment.

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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.

Comparing planning for impending Gulf Coast threats

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Houston skyline5.jpgJoel Kotkin is an Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and is the author of The City: A Global History (Modern Library, 2005). In this Opinion Journal op-ed, he compares the disparate preparations of New Orleans and Houston to the two recent hurricanes, and makes several useful recommendations regarding planning for natural disasters and development of urban areas on the Gulf Coast, including the following:

[The Gulf Coast region], with the notable exception of New Orleans, is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. Its relatively low costs and balmy climate have turned it into the “opportunity coast.” Yet clearly the Gulf’s history has shown that ignoring nature has its perils. Few now remember Indianola, south of Houston. Until it was wiped out by hurricanes, first in 1875 and then again in 1886, it was Texas’s second-largest port. Today, most of that city lies under water.

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More trouble for DeLay friend?

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abramoffj3.jpgThis NY Times article reports that the Justice Department’s inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the November, 2002 demotion of Frederick A. Black, a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment shut down a criminal investigation that he had been pursuing of Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Abramoff is a well-known Washington lobbyist and a major Republican Party fund-raiser who is a close confidant of Houston congressman and House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay. Here are the previous posts relating to a broad corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff focusing on accusations that he defrauded Indian tribes and their gambling operations out of millions of dollars in lobbying fees.

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Rita damage taxes power grid

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Entergy2.gifOn the heels of Entergy Corp.’s decision to place its New Orleans subsidiary in bankruptcy last week on the day that Hurricane Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast at the Texas-Louisiana border, the utility is now dealing with serious damage to its power infrastructure that is threatening to stall the recovery effort in East Texas from the storm.
On Monday, Entergy’s Texas subsidiary commenced rolling blackouts in the area of far north Houston that it services, including The Woodlands. The move was made to reduce stress on the utility’s damaged electrical system after Hurricane Rita and related tornadoes downed power lines and disabled most of the utility’s power plants. A total of almost 1.25 million accounts were without power as of Monday in East Texas and Western Louisiana.

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