PIPELINES SINKING

Planning for the future was not part of the thinking when this energy complex was created. Will the next energy complex be planned with more foresight? What part of present resources and funding will be applied to correcting the mistakes of the past and what part to building a wiser future?

The next energy crisis; More than a quarter of America’s oil flows through southern Louisiana. Too bad the land is slowly sinking into the sea.
Nicholas Varchaver, August 6, 2007 (Fortune)

WHO
Port Fourchon operators and local, state and federal officials responsible for keeping oil and gas flowing; oil and gas companies using the lines; oil and gas consumers.

Port Fourchon (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Pipelines at Port Fourchon connect to half of US refining capacity, carry 27% of US oil and 30% of US natural gas. The land on which the port sits is eroding away and sinking.

WHEN
25 square miles of Louisiana have been collapsing into the gulf each year for three-quarters of a century. 1,900 square miles, the area of Delaware, disappeared between the 1930s and 2005. 217 square miles disappeared with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

WHERE
Port Fourchon is where the Louisiana Bayou meets the Gulf of Mexico, 60 miles south of New Orleans.

WHY
- Some of those involved in the problem regard it as a chronic problem, not a crisis. Others take it more seriously and assert that national security is at stake. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have raised awareness of the problem but it is not clear the message has registered in the corridors of power and some fear it will take another devastating hurricane to do so.
- Ted Falgout, the man who has run Port Fourchon for 28 years, believes the port will not be part of the mainland in ten years.
- Efforts to sustain port: rock-filled barges sunk offshore, foresting a ridge onshore, raise Highway 1 onto stilts, oil companies replacing, retrenching and protecting pipelines
- Nobody knows how much pipeline there is or where it all is. Some oil companies have found their lines a quarter mile or more from where they were supposed to be.
- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco sued the U.S. Department of the Interior and won 38% of royalties earned on Gulf drilling, $500 million/year but state plan to save the port will cost $50 billion over 30-40 years. The federal government’s choice may be to spend to save people or to save pipelines.
- The alternative is for the people who make money from the pipelines to fix them. So far, they are doing it piecemeal.

Many messes to clean up. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Falgout: "We're on a train wreck here…We have not designed the energy infrastructure - or any infrastructure - [to handle land loss]…There are places where a pipeline that was laid in marsh, well protected, is now in five or six feet of water - in an open bay that is subject to a vessel coming across and hitting it…That's the thing that [oil companies] are spending their money on right now. It's so huge that they're just putting out fires."
- Clifford Smith, ceo, engineering company T. Baker Smith: "The pipeline companies are very - I don't want to say nervous - they're very concerned…We're constantly doing what we call as-builts, [inspections of existing pipelines], and remedial work…Accidents are happening because of the changes in topography. It's a big thing."
Melody Meyer, vice president of Gulf operations, Chevron: "It's a real concern…But we've always been able to manage it."
- Oliver Houck, environmentalist/law professor: "Today we tell Congress that we 'sacrificed' ourselves for the national good. Never has there been such a willing, complicit sacrifice. We made a bundle of money, wasted most of it, and blackballed anyone who questioned what it was doing to the Louisiana coast."
- Mark Davis, Tulane University senior research fellow: "The scale of action we're talking about is not unprecedented…But it took a sense of national purpose. Not federal purpose. That's the key thing here. That's why people should care about what happens here. It's not because you have to love Cajun food or you love pulling some oil company's fat out of the fire. It's because, quite frankly, the country has a lot at stake here.”