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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (67009)	8/5/2005 4:50:27 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 74559

If there is a hurricane nearby to a refinery, thereby blocking access, then that refinery may have to reduce production. But where this happens frequently, such as Chevron's Pascagoula Mississippi refinery, there is enough oil storage to keep the plant running. Shutting down offshore platforms is different because production is lost. In the bigger picture, crude oil come from so many different locations. Crude from the Middle East can go to Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, China, or even California bypassing the Atlantic completely and the crude keeps moving. You could imagine certain extreme scenarios where there might be localized shortages, but generally this never happens. For the tanker officer, headquarters is run by madmen. They are ordered to leave Ras Tanura and make way for Rotterdam at at Flank Speed picking up supplies by helicopter from Capetown. Just past Cape Town they receive orders to proceed to Freeport Bahamas at one eighth speed. Then several days later they are ordered fleet normal speed to Canaport Halifax. Sometimes they have just rounded Cape Town on their way to Perth Amboy New Jersey and are ordered to turn about and head back to Singapore. They always hated back-tracking for some reason. I don't know why, its not like they got paid less, I think they felt like part of their accomplishment was taken away. From the logistics desk, this all makes sense as conditions change. I think its likely that most of the oil inventory in the world is inside tankers. When oil prices were low and supplies abundant, tankers cruised around the world at one eighth speed - or sometimes one quarter speed filled with oil and one eighth speed when empty. The slower you go, the more fuel efficient you are. Since you pay for the tanker, crew and officers in any event, there's few other ways to save money - and there's no place to park all of those tankers except on the high seas. We had some great photos of tankers in really heavy seas where the waves break over the bow and roll down the length of the tanker toward the bridge. Because of their size, they are among the safest ships in the world. Since they have so little control and so much time, most of the officer's frustrations are focused on really petty crap. We supplied them with the wrong type of slippers or the wrong brand of vacuum cleaner. The wine supplied by Cape Town was not to their liking so they threw it overboard. I can recall those Radiograms like it was yesterday. "RUSCE 0539720 RESCOW. RIPTA QUALITY ITEM" which decodes as "Regarding requisition 0539720 thrown overboard. Supply urgent same but quality item." .