Aloha R.C.!

So do you still stand by what you have said about the OIL industry? Do these embedded systems use local time or GMT? Just checking:)

So far so good people, hope it keeps up and all of us "doomers" turn out to be really, really wrong! I would love the "pollies" to win this one!

Aloha, Lokelo

-- Lokelo (lokelo@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

Wow, I finally get back in here and right off the bat, someone is asking me questions. Embeddeds as I am told are primarily running off of GMT with operator conversion possible too. So... GMT is the first real time factor in most cases regarding oil embeddeds... and TAVA report cited embeddeds taking anywhere from seconds to a month or more to crash a system. As such... according to the TAVA stats... we've not even walked thru the doorway and into the room let alone gone out the back doorway. Breathe easy after March 1 for leapday.

Frankly, a there are the silent deadly failures that fail but no one notices that builds into cross defaults. My guys are most worried about the immediate aspect because of greater safety dangers as the clocks (GMT primarily for safety precision to nuclear clocks)... roll over. The worry is "what if everything goes at once" ... not enough hands to move fast enough. If embeddeds fail haphazardly .. better chances to react and prevent an explosion.. at least that is the theory... I'm not sure if it's really that warranted or not. Couple of guys don't think so...figure its all equally dangerous in refining.

This btw applies overseas also for GMT espec in the former areas of the British empire...so embeddeds haven't rolled most likely. Also some areas of Asia didn't have much if any embeddeds... Australia had little to none. Ditto for much of China. Indonesia is a different story.

I take what the PR guys at a company say with a grain of salt... they're just parroting what the lawyers have told them to say. Memorized it I'm sure.

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), December 31, 1999.

Aloha R.C.!

Thanks for the fast response! Sorry to be a pest:) I didn't know about GMT until yesterday. Anyway my bets are on your reports and DD Reed's. If it ain't bad by Feb. 14 It won't get as bad as I'm still betting it will:)

Thanks for all of your efforts, and hey if it turns out we were wrong? Cool with me , never wanted to be right about it anyway!!!

mahalo nui, Lokelo

-- Lokelo (lokelo@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.

If XYZ corp. has a database or embedded chip based breakdown they won't necessarily rush to the microphones to announce their failure and vulnerability to their competitors, creditors, stockholders and the world.

I'm expecting the news to leak out over time. DRC

-- David Craig (DesertDave@aol.com), December 31, 1999.

To R.C. Should the SHTF in regards to refineries and wells shutting down, how long till we would feel it in the US, days, weeks, months? Also, on a scale of 1-10 what do you feel the odds of all the things you've discussed happening? Thanks

-- Rich (rubeliever@webtv.net), December 31, 1999.

Just I stated a moment before, patience is a hard lesson to learn. Many of the mainframes were shut down for the weekend. Wait till monday when they are all turned back on. Wait till the GMT has rolled, wait till all the embeds have kicked in, wait until the leap year (Feb) has come and gone. Everybody, including myself are just too impatient. It ain't over till the fat lady sings. Patience and being a good listener are two qualities of life I have never been able to conquer, a major fact for the many failures in my 68 years af life, I always quit something just short of success.

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), December 31, 1999.

R.C. - You've probably already seen this:

Y2K - US Oil Pipelines To Be Shutdown... Despite Assurances 12-30-99

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gasoline, heating oil and other fuel shipments will be idled for hours coast-to-coast on New Year's Eve, as U.S. pipeline companies take precautions for the Year 2000 transition despite assurances they're ready.

Echoing confidence voiced across the oil sector, all major pipeline firms, including Colonial, Buckeye, Explorer, Williams and Kinder Morgan, said their networks are Y2K compliant. But no one is taking chances in case customers are not as ready, or if power glitches or the unexpected occurs.

"There are a lot of variables out there that we are not sure about," Buckeye Pipeline Co. spokesman Roy Haase said.

"We are confident our system is ready for 2000, but we are tied to other firms and individuals. We don't want to take a risk where we don't have to, if they are not Y2K ready," he added, echoing remarks by the other pipeline firms.

According to the North American Electric Reliability Council, a few utilities are not ready for the roll but none of these problems were bad enough to cause outages.

Oil traders cited last minute "top-up" buying this week from refiners and other players who want to ensure they have enough to meet year-end demand. This prompted gains in distillate fuel prices in the Gulf Coast and New York.

However, few expect drastic consequences from the outages. If anything, short-term pressure on cash prices in some hubs is feared if Y2K turns out a non-event, as ample supply from weeks of stockpiling could be dumped onto spot markets.

"Even if it's widespread there will be enough inventories at terminals and further down the supply chain," said a trader covering the Gulf Coast, the nation's largest cash market.

The coast-to-coast stoppages are planned as follows:

-- The 700,000 barrels per day Houston-to-Chicago Explorer: 20 hours, starting 5:00 p.m. Eastern time (2200 GMT);

-- The 2.1-million bpd Houston-to-New York Colonial line: eight hours, 6:30 p.m. Eastern time (2330 GMT);

-- The 600,000 bpd Williams (from Oklahoma to Midwestern cities): several hours amid the roll, duration unspecified;

-- The one-million bpd Buckeye to the East coast: two hours, restart as of 1 a.m. Eastern time, a system at a time;

-- The one-million bpd Kinder Morgan serving western states: two hours, to restart 1 a.m. Pacific time.

But some oil analysts warn that bringing the lines back up may not be as easy as shutting them off. [Firtst time I've seen this discussed publicly, rather than only on these threads.]

Given it is winter and U.S. petroleum and product inventories are steadily dwindling due to global crude output cuts, any extended shutdowns of the pipelines could cause jitters in the world's leading energy-consuming nation.

Warburg Dillon Read analyst Scott Smith said recently it makes sense for pipeline grids to be shut during the transition since some traverse multiple power grids. But he warned of the possibility that such a "multiplier effect"

He said inland refiners may also be affected as they will prefer to stock up on crude rather than products, which will back up in the system if pipelines are not working. This may result in a squeeze on domestic crudes, spiking their prices.

"The refiners will not want to be constrained to have to slow down on production," Smith added.

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), December 31, 1999.

Hi Cheryl..

Yes I did see that...and it confirms some of my closer sources latest commments...esp in Texas. Yet...I've still not actually seen official statements from any oil co. announcing refinery shutdowns..just pipelines and terminals. My guys tell me start up is almost as much of a nightmare as a sudden shutdown from a safety standpoint whether it is refining or pipelines. Not so much with wells...but I've not heard that any wells are shutting down. Just transport mechanisms.

Great to hear from you Cheryl...Hope all is well with you and yours. Let us know if you hear anything about oil in the great NW. :-)

RC

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), December 31, 1999.

Have to say I'm quite shocked at the "no problems whatsoever" reporting going on. I was watching everything very closely today and all that came accross the Newswires was "All CLear" everywhere.

I was a little surprised that we did not, and have not gone back to any of the countries which rolled for the "sigh of relief" stories which I think logically should be appearing by now. Not to mention the "see those idiots were dead wrong" stories which don't seem to be comming. Either we in industry fixed everything in the world, perfectly with no money and little time, or we're not getting the whole story.

I did see a rather interesting piece on a refinery in Indonesia reporting cutting run rates by 800 thousand bpd. That would seem to be an abnormally large cut.

Guess it wouldn't do to have everyone see lights going out if it did happen somewhere. I'm not buying all this happy face shit just yet. I wan't some people from NZ and AU and TKYO to do interviews saying "all is well".

Why aren't these being done?

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.

Gordon,

I suspect the lack of follow up stories is because the main event is still taking place (won't be done until Hawai'i goes through the rollover).

I, too, am amazed (and very happy) that the embedded chip problem has yet to surface (but then again, we haven't reached midnight at GMT yet). I don't claim to know anything about embedded chips (other than what I've read over the past six months - which doesn't make me qualified to answer anything about them), so I'll hold my breath until March, and watch the prices at the pumps.

-- James (jpeet@u.washington.edu), December 31, 1999.

RC

Not much longer til we know if you have been yanking our chain.....

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.

Check out AP, Reuters, UPI etc.

All saying y2k has been defeated.

Strange that because by my watch we have 3 hours to go in the USA.

And I am cutting over my airline system in 3 hours.

I wonder what the real situation is like in the North sea, Gulf of Mexico, Saudi, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria...

Those AP/Reuters reports were written weeks ago IMHO...

Nice to know MY system is AOK... I maight as well go home now then...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), December 31, 1999.

"As such... according to the TAVA stats... we've not even walked thru the doorway and into the room let alone gone out the back doorway. Breathe easy after March 1 for leapday."

RC, Sir, as usual, concerning embedded systems you are an alarmist and forever clueless. After the first few hours of y2k, weve already walked through the door, the next few days will show almost all the problems, and the few straglers left will be much fewer in numbers.

Koskinen, Gartner Group, everyone I know working on y2k in embedded systems says the same thing. If you had a hint as to how embedded systems work, you wouldn't spout such nonsense. Fortunately, your days of "credibility" are short.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFindre@bzn.com), January 01, 2000.

Factfinder it's funny how you now come along after the fact, and repeat your mantra.

"Where things really bother me is in the chemical and oil industries where automation dates back to the 1920s and computerization goes back to the use of analog controllers from the 50s. Digital control is centralized in the computer control stations where some things have not changed from the day of installation some 20 30 years ago. The things that have changed were patch like. Embedded systems are a great unknown, since all have some sort of time control, but the logic does not necessarily use the date. Actually, it rarely uses the date. But the central computer uses the data stored by the control and measurement devices and may find some of that data unusable. Some of it will simply get erased because of a common procedure where old data is erased - and guess what, data from 1900 is perpetually the oldest. Usually, this data is backed up in archives for long term analysis and record keeping - so that is remediable within hours. Process optimizers are a problem, since these computer calculations often do use dates, and search for cyclical relationships that are time dependent. A slight error is enough to turn their instructions to the plant into gobbledygook. Now, the main issue for the chemical industry is that nearly everything, but for maintenance, is done on a real time bassis with less than a day - often less than a couple of hours - residence time in the plant. Things can go haywire in a few seconds. Much of the design of these operations is geared to automatic shutdown in the case of malfunction. This, and the trigger happy operator are the greatest dangers to operation of the chemical industry. Most operations should be on partial or complete shutdown at some point in Jan. Optimization programs may be put offline during the date transition and this will cause a drop in production efficiency, but will raise reliability of operations and lower the likelyhood of stoppage. I don't know that this will indeed be a problem on a large scale if most of the controll automation is put offline and replaced with manual operation. Of the many operations closing over the end of the month period, nearly all should be partially operational by the end of Jan, with most operating close enough to optimum.

Again, the most significant issue I can point to is the likely occurrence of spot shortages of oil based and chemical commodities. How bad? Up to 3-4 week delays in delivery, 10% to 30% discrepancies in delivery (less delivered than ordered, or wrong quality level or grade). The rest of the Industrial and retail system should fare better with on-time delivery at 70s standards (less than 50% on time - in many industries it was 20% on time, 50-60% late, 10-20% wrong items, and 10-20% never delivered). As delays bubble through the system and inventories are drawn down, prices will rise and limit some buying demand. Operations will likely experience hick-ups rather than disasters. Expect hoarding, i.e. inventory building, to exacerbate shortages in key chemical commodities where disruptions were really bad. This will also feed prices."

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 01, 2000.