"There is normally a 30-day gasoline supply available"...being upped to 37 days.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Probably a re-post. Sorry if so. yahoo link
Saturday October 23 12:03 AM ET 
U.S. Energy Department Sets Y2K Watch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department will team with industry experts to monitor any disruptions to energy supplies worldwide as Year 2000 dawns, Secretary Bill Richardson said Friday.

In a statement, Richardson said the department would staff its existing emergency operations center around the clock between Dec. 28 and ``the first several days of January 2000'' to collect information on electricity, oil and gas industries.

Government and industry experts will keep tabs on ``all domestic and international energy sector activities'' to track the Y2K bug, a design defect that could scramble unprepared computers on Jan. 1 if they confuse the new year with 1900.

Status reports will be used to brief President Clinton and other government officials, [what's the HTML tag for "yeah, fu$#%&ing right] and to keep the public informed. The status reports will be fed to a $40 million White House Y2K Information Coordination Center run by John Koskinen, head of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion.

U.S. gasoline stations should have ample fuel supplies during the New Year's Day weekend but oil companies plan extra gasoline shipments just in case Y2K fears lead to extra fill-ups in anticipation of problems, industry and government officials said this week.

There is normally a 30-day supply of gasoline available, but oil firms are planning an extra seven-day supply of fuel shipments to handle expected higher demand, said Ron Quiggins, chairman of the American Petroleum Institute's Y2K task force.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 25, 1999

Answers

bwaaahahahaha (couldn't help it)

"extra seven days" based on what? Seven NORMAL days of gas purchases, or seven days of gas based on HIGHLY INCREASED gas purchasing?

-- Cory Hill (coryh@strategic-services.net), October 25, 1999.


I'm sitting here....... hey, what's wrong with this: let's go back to blimps for mass transportation. Wouldn't that be fun?

Since you could fly in a straight line, the loss of speed would be offset.

Then the passengers bail off with alien parachute pods.

Man, I really am not psychologically prepared for a petroleum catastrophe.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 25, 1999.


After reading the last API press release on y2k stating any rollover disruptions concerns '...have no basis in fact', its evident API press releases are meant to mitigate panic and put a smiley face spin on things. API lost all crediblity with me. It tells me they are really concerned about pre year end panic buying if not post rollover problems.

There is some truth to their higher gasoline stock contention though. Normally we get refineries doing their 'turnaround' (maintenance) work in this time frame. Contary to what I would expect for y2k work, this Fall's refinery turnaround cutback has been light. They're already gearing up with high crude throughputs in antipation of high demand around the end of the year. Current gasoline stocks are about 205 million barrels. Gasoline production rates are higher than normal because they're bumping up crude runs and the distillate (heating oil + diesel) economics are worse than normal. There's about 10-20% of their crude cut that can go into either gasoline or distillate production. They're maxing out gasoline right now.

So its very feasible that they might build gasoline stocks by about 50 million barrels. With current gasoline demand just short of 8 million bls a day, that'd be accurate.

But here's the crux of it- if they bump up refining runs its gonna draw down crude stocks. Domestic crude stocks are already very low- below 300 million barrels-oft considered a minimum comfort level. As I've said on several previous threads - crude stocks are going lower and gonna get damn tight. Watch for a supportive inventory report this Tuesday and a trading squeeze on the Dec NYMEX crude contract as it goes off the board on Nov 19 (just a hunch).

Can foreign supplies make up for this shortfall? Negatory. The European markets are pulling us higher and with y2k concerns greater overseas- intl fundamentals will prob accelerate our anticipated shortage, not mitigate it.

As I've been saying- You want a y2k market play? Its crude oil.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), October 25, 1999.


Downstreamer, I would love to play oil, but I suspect a temporary nationalization is in the offing.......

Thanks for all your data. There used to be this one 'optimist' named Morgan who fed us lots of oil news, but he tanked out somehow.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 25, 1999.


Lisa

I think you had better get ready for a petroleum catastrophe as it is probably the most certain dominoe to fall....

Everything hinges on OIL and it looks like it MUST go down

-- matt (whome@somewhere.nz), October 25, 1999.



Thanks for the confirmation Downstreamer.

I'm glad that they are pumping up gasoline supplies (kind of a downer about crude, but this will be a long term problem next year for which we will all pay quite handsomely). I'd rather have the gasoline during panic and early disruptions so that people are still available to deal with the long term problem with crude supply.

Is it my imagination, or were the refineries in a similar position to the utilities in terms of waiting for remediation until after the peak summer period. I thought many of the refineries were waiting to make last minute changes. Can they still do this, or are they just making hay while the sun shines? FOF in petroleum would be ugly.

Oh, FYI, the source that Dog Gone referenced who was on the sand in SA, recently (Saturday) reported that he sees a HIGH probability of interrupted flow of crude from the Mid-East for 4-8 months.

I just hope Venezuela is in better shape, but I doubt it.

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), October 25, 1999.


My original petro bright idea was to buy a salvage yard and fill all the tanks.

But if it turns out you need it - and I'm convinced we will - I don't think anybody's gonna want to be caught hoarding gas. Not me.

Many, many moons ago on Flint's 'polly pep-talk' thread, I mentioned I'd read somewhere (unrelated to Y2K) that .gov, at all levels, consumes 1/2 the nation's refined petro supply. But this includes cops, buses, mail trucks/cars, .gov employees driving/flying on expense accounts, the military, garbage trucks, Air Force One, etc. etc.

Like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, - got the carpool list made out?

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 25, 1999.


Unlike power generation, there's 2 peak seasons with refineries. The Fall turnaround is hitting now. Work will be done by mid-Nov and they'll subsequently be back at full throughput capacity within 3 weeks. They'll definately crack out all the gasoline and heating oil that they can before rollover.

I need more info on Dog One's Mideast remediator and his contentions or I'm retaining my grains of salt on Saudi oil flows. Relative to refining operations and all the undercapitalized screwy 3rd world backwaters, the fundamentals of getting Mideast crude oil out of the ground and into tankers isn't that tough.

Did you notice the Kuwaiti oil flows and fires after the Gulf War? They don't even need to pump the oil out in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf region. They're huge wells and it flows out naturally. If the Saudis, Kuwaitis and ARAMCO have been focusing on this for over a year, they'll figure out how to get it into a tanker especially with the possible incentive of crude economics up over $30.

Now with Mexico, Iran, Indonesia and several others its a different story- complex and expensive backpressure and secondary/tertiary recovery techniques needed to pump oil. Who knows?

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), October 25, 1999.


'Scuse me, but if they're maxing out gasoline production, what does that do to supplies of diesel? You know, the stuff that runs the trucks and trains...?

-- Thinman (thinman38@hotmail.com), October 25, 1999.

The refineries have computerize optimiztion systems that tell them to adjust their crude cuts off the distillation columns to go into gasoline or distillate streams contingent on the current and anticipated crude vs products economics (the spread relationship between crude and gasoline or distillate). If they overproduce gasoline at the expense of diesel production, 'gasoline cracks' (the economics to produce gasoline) will fall and 'distillate cracks' will improve until it becomes more profitable to produce distillate.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), October 25, 1999.


It's 30 day supply, with mandatory rationing...to eke it out to 37 days! Oh happy 38th day!

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 26, 1999.

Have a couple friends working in refineries here in Northern CA. Their analysis of what's going on (both are machinists) where they work are that the plant will shutdown before year end and be restarted early January. They "hear" that the plants may have problems and that the contingency is to run the plant manually (albeit at %50-60 capacity).

Sure hope they're wrong but both are GI types, pretty smart and keeping their ears open. Both have worked there over 20 years and know a lot of folks around the plant and in operations. Based on this I have 150 gal. of gas (soon 250), 50 gallons of diesel and shortly 50 gallons of kero. If nothing else it will save me money when gas hits $3 a gallon or more next May.

DCK

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), October 26, 1999.


There will be disruptions. You can absolutely count on it.

-- Dog Gone (layinglow@rollover.now), October 26, 1999.

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