Ike’s Damage to Refineries Appears Minimal

09/22/2008
By Pam Radtke Russell

The oil and gas industry is still evaluating damage from Hurricane Ike, but preliminary reports indicate that 28 platforms were damaged. But complete damage may take weeks, if not months, to assess, as the MMS is likely to require close-up inspections of key pipelines. Hurricanes with higher waves, like Hurricane Ike, historically have severely damaged pipelines.

“The damage appears to be less widespread,” than in Katrina or Rita, says Andy Radford, a senior policy advisor with the American Petroleum Institute. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. might have the worst post-storm damage, reporting several toppled platforms. Shell Exploration and Production reported moderate damage to its facilities and BP Plc’s most serious damage appears to be a drilling derrick that was topped over on its Mad Dog spar platform.

At least three companies reported that their jack-up rigs were missing. Radford says that standards developed after hurricanes Katrina and Rita called for jack-up rigs to be more than 50 ft in the air, but that might not have been high enough for Ike, which had higher waves.

Damage appears to be minimal to the 14 Gulf Coast refineries shuttered by Ike. Lack of electricity was the primary problem to restarting the refineries, according to the Department of Energy.

Just east of Houston, ExxonMobil’s largest petrochemical complex in Baytown suffered limited damage and power has been restored. The company’s 348,500 bpd refinery in Beaumont sustained water damage, but has started a portion of its electrical cogenerating unit, says a spokeswoman.

Spokesmen for Fluor Corp. of Irving, and Superior Energy Services, Harvey, La., two companies that did a great amount of the cleanup work following Katrina and Rita, say they’ve been in touch with their clients and are ready to get to work cleaning up the damage, but wouldn’t cite any particular damage. Greg Rosenstein, of Superior, says that the company’s Katrina cleanup work has wound down and the company has plenty of capacity to help clean up after Ike.

Before the cleanup begins in the Gulf, the main port to service those platforms and rigs, Port Fourchon at the southern tip of Louisiana, must be cleaned up and readied for the service crews that will depart from there. The port and Louisiana 1, the single road that goes to the port, were covered in more than 6-ft of water following hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Neither suffered serious problems, and the port should be operating at about 50% by the start of this week, says Ted Falgout, executive director of the port. The main damage to the port was a rock jetty at the eastern entrance to the port was pounded and destroyed by Gustav and Ike. The destruction of the jetty, in part led to a silting in of the main entrance channel from 26-ft to 20-ft. Falgout says he expects the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to let a contract for dredging of the channel any day, and to soon bid a contract out to rebuild the rock jetty, a job he expects will cost anywhere from $10 million to $30 million.

A Corps spokeswoman could not provide any details about bids for the jobs or any others needed following Ike.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, flooding was reported in areas where levees had been breached by Gustav or Ike, in Caernarvon, Braithwaite, Lafitte and Grand Isle. During the flooding, the state reversed a siphon at the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project that usually moves Mississippi River water into wetlands to help drain the storm surge into the Mississippi River.

The damage to roads in Louisiana is still being assessed, says Mark Lambert, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation, with the biggest problem being movable bridges around the state that were knocked out from debris, high water, electrical or other problems. Lambert says he expects the damage to movable bridges will be about $25 million. The department expects damage from Gustav will top $70 million. The department hired to Willow Grove, Penn.’s Asplundh Environmental Services Inc. as its debris contractor for Gustav and expects 1.5 million cu yds of debris from that storm and an additional 500,000 cu yds from Ike. (With reporting by Eileen Schwartz)

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