We are only now beginning to be able to assess in real time what damage Hurricane Ike has caused to oil structures and other property. We are hearing of flooding, electrical outages, damages to oil platforms and pipelines, among other things. This thread is for discussing these issues.

According to today's DOE report, 3.6 million barrels of refinery capacity is shut in, and 2.5 million barrels is operating with reduced runs. In my refinery article, I used an estimate of one-third of production from reduced runs being off line. With this approach, 4.4 million barrels of refinery production is off-line, which is about 22% of oil products use. The corresponding calculation from yesterday's report would indicate that 4.5 million barrels were offline then, so we are making slight progress. It would be difficult to get along without 22% of oil products for long, however.

Also, from that report, there are 3.9 million electricity customers without electrical power, including 2.4 million from Texas.

The report indicates that 1.3 million barrels of crude oil production is off-line. The US produced a total of about 5.1 million barrels of crude oil a day, including all of the United States. The amount currently off-line amounts to about 25% of US production.

Let us know what other information you see and hear.