Ike Forces Shutdown of 19% of U.S. Refining Capacity

At least 13 refineries in Texas including plants operated by Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc shut 3.64 million barrels a day of refining capacity as Ike approached Texas. Exxon and Shell said today they would begin assessing damage of Gulf facilities as soon as weather permitted.

``If these refinery outages go three weeks or more, most of the nation could see $4 gasoline again,'' Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said in an telephone interview with Bloomberg. ``If they are back up in a week, it may be a 15- or 20-cent-a-gallon increase.''

-EPJ Newsdesk

Hurricane Ike Update

From weather.com:

A hurricane warning remains in effect from Morgan City, Louisiana, to Baffin Bay, Texas and tropical storm warnings are in effect for the southeast Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, including the city of New Orleans.

Ike should make landfall along the upper Texas coast tonight or very early Saturday morning as a Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane. The landfall location will probably be very close to Galveston, Texas.

Along with the surge comes powerful, damaging winds. Hurricane-force winds extend 120 miles from the center while tropical storm-force winds extend and astounding 275 miles from the center.

Because of this massive size, it is very important to emphasize that tropical storm and hurricane conditions will be felt well before Ike's center of circulation makes landfall. Conditions will deteriorate along the Texas coast and the southwestern Louisiana coast by this afternoon.