US refiners seek oil from strategic reserve due to fog in the gulf

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[B] US Business Brief: US refiners seek oil from strategic reserve March 2, 2001

By John Troland, BridgeNews

Houston--March 1--Fog on the Gulf Coast has made it so difficult for tankers to unload that some oil refiners have begun asking to borrow oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy said the department has received exploratory inquires from a number of Gulf Coast refiners seeking to borrow from the reserve on a short-term basis. She said the DOE doesn't want to lend oil at the moment, but might reconsider if shortages on the coast get worse.

Supplies of oil in the region, the United States' main oil-refining center, have dwindled because of persistent fog.

Last June, the DOE allowed two refineries in Lake Charles, La., to receive some crude from the reserve after the shipping channel they share was accidentally blocked. The Clinton Administration at the time defended the move as a way to ensure supplies of gasoline were available in the Northeast last summer.

The exchanges were separate from the 30 million barrels of crude swapped from the SPR in late 2000 in an effort to prevent a shortage of crude and heating oil this winter.

Crude oil inventories in the U.S. dropped 12 million barrels two weeks ago and remain near record low levels partly due to ongoing weather-related problems at the U.S. Gulf. End (Peter Rosenthal in New York contributed to this report.) (US-BRIEF-OIL-LOANS]

http://www.individual.com/browse/story.shtml?story=b0301045.4rg&level1=46600&level2=46604&level3=27692&date=20010302

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 02, 2001

Answers

Balderdash. There's no fog down here.

-- David Williams (DAVIDWILL@prodigy.net), March 02, 2001.

I agree... no fog down here!

Best regards, Tee

-- Blanche Fleur (teefleur@yahoo.com), March 02, 2001.


Maybe it's skwerl duhst.

-- NdewT (NdewTyme@Ndew.com), March 03, 2001.

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