Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field shutdown

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Well, now to add to MORE of the year's oddness.

In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line.

BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel.

Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

...

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.

"Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment," Emori said. "But we can't really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced."

Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said he expected the impact to be minimal.

"The U.S. market is actually well-supplied; crude inventories are very high," he said. "So while this won't have any immediate impact on U.S. supplies, the market is in very high anxiety. So any significant disruption, traders will take that into account, even though there is no threat of a supply shortage."

And so we'll see.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 7 August 2006 04:06 (nineteen years ago)

how long 'fore we hit $100/barrel?

― kingfish cyclopean ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 7 August 2006 04:10 (nineteen years ago)

how long before people stop buying gas guzzlers?

― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Monday, 7 August 2006 09:17 (nineteen years ago)

Well, British MPs have proposed that the tax on them should be raised from £210 per year to £1800 per year.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 7 August 2006 09:23 (nineteen years ago)

Nice to see that BP's record profits won't go into anything useless like infrastructure maintenance.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 7 August 2006 20:01 (nineteen years ago)

$7 A GALLON GAS RULEZ.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 7 August 2006 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

also elvis telecom very much otm.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 7 August 2006 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

I wonder why, when faced with an oil crisis, our first
impulse is to raid the Middle East instead of instituting
a major carpooling campaign.

Also, how come no one's talked about helping solve the problem
by changing zoning laws? Force city governments to build housing
adjacent or even inside business/industrial areas, so most
people can walk/bike to work.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 7 August 2006 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

I wonder why, when faced with an oil crisis, our first impulse is to raid the Middle East instead of instituting a major carpooling campaign.

Carpooling is something nut-job liberals in the blue states do!

Also, how come no one's talked about helping solve the problem by changing zoning laws? Force city governments to build housing adjacent or even inside business/industrial areas, so most people can walk/bike to work.

A pipe can dream...

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 7 August 2006 21:41 (nineteen years ago)

As can a pipeline ...

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Monday, 7 August 2006 21:43 (nineteen years ago)

the thing that is not often mentioned but more devastating I think than high gas prices is high hom eheatin goil prices. You can walk to work but you can't just freeze in the winter. I look sadly upon this as fall approaches.

― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:28 (nineteen years ago)

Also, how come no one's talked about helping solve the problem by changing zoning laws? Force city governments to build housing adjacent or even inside business/industrial areas, so most people can walk/bike to work.

When I was in Orlando, FL, the Orange county commissioners were talking very seriously about this and about increasing housing densities to make mass transit more of a realistic prospect.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:38 (nineteen years ago)

SOMEBODY BUILD HYDROGEN CAR PLZ

― Domenico Buttez (ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!!), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:48 (nineteen years ago)

Also, how come no one's talked about helping solve the problem by changing zoning laws? Force city governments to build housing adjacent or even inside business/industrial areas, so most people can walk/bike to work.

even with zoning changes, this is a difficult thing to turn from "good idea" into reality. is there enough available land for new construction? how will this affect existing traffic? how will traffic affect neighborhood air quality? with all the traffic, will residents bitch about the street noise? where will everyone park? if the city has inclusionary-housing laws, will the developer be willing to shoulder the cost of providing and maintaining "affordable" units in a luxury building? can the area's infrastructure support an influx of residents (and will the mixture of office towers and high-rise apartments force the area into rolling blackouts come summertime)? will developers take a chance on building residences in predominantly business-oriented districts if there are no amenities, schools, hospitals, police/fire services within spitting distance?

these are all rhetorical questions; i'm completely for what you're talking about.

― Leave Brintey Alone (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:50 (nineteen years ago)

SOMEBODY BUILD HYDROGEN CAR PLZ

How are you going to make your hydrogen?

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:52 (nineteen years ago)

another thing about creating a residential district within a business district -- the residents will form a neighborhood association and GUARANTEE that nothing else in that district will ever get built. not new offices, not view-spoiling condos, not new transit projects.

i'm sorry, i'm thinking too much like an LA person now. i took new york's relative ease-of-use for granted!

― Leave Brintey Alone (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 10:06 (nineteen years ago)

ANYTHING BUT OIL

Srsly. Honda are producing hydrogen for their prototype Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car in Japan with electricity at a hydro-electric plant.

― Domenico Buttez (ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!!), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 10:07 (nineteen years ago)

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