Bullseye: Your gas tank

Michael Moore says Hurricane Gustav is "proof there is a God in Heaven."

WELL, IF THAT'S THE CASE, what does it say that this is the bullseye of God's "judgment"? Would that make the target of divine wrath not the Republican National Convention and George W. Bush but, instead, Americans' gas-guzzling, wasteful ways?

Hurricane Gustav has been a Category 3 all day - At 11pm EDT, NHC continues to say that 'some intensification is possible tonight'. 0Z (23:00 EDT) models have increased damage forecasts a bit from six hours ago, but not a lot; however, this can change if it weakens further or re-intensifies or has different landfall track and speed, etc. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, and Port Fourchon, which has historically been a land base for offshore oil support services in the Gulf, is still directly in the path of Gustav and is expected to take damage. As you will see below, a good bit of oil and natural gas is also expected to be taken offline: some for a few weeks, some for much longer, according to Methaz' models.

Matthew Simmons, of Simmons International says:

LOOP is the only facility in the Gulf to unload VLCC tankers which carry over 2 million barrels of crude. They can in theory be "litered" by unloading onto smaller tankers that can make it into the Gulf Coast ports but this is very lenghty timing and the spare capacity of these smaller tankers is slim. We get about 1.2 million b/d of crude imports through Loop. (+/- 10%)

TO SUMMARIZE the above discussion on The Oil Drum blog . . . Got oil?

Port Fourchon (FOO-shon): Remember that name. And remember places like Port Fourchon and the port of New Orleans are why rebuilding Louisiana's wetlands is important.

Oh, wait . . . we didn't care about Louisiana's wetlands? Oops. Our bad.