(a kleptocracy) arrest of Dokubo-Aasari (a top guerrilla entrepreneur),
Nigerian oil fields are under immediate threat.
Year to date US oil imports from Nigeria: 1.04 million barrels a day.
Alali Horsfall, Dokubo-Asari’s second-in-command in the Niger Delta
People’s Volunteer Force, said by cell phone Thursday that he and a
force of 6,000 men, armed with machetes and dynamite, had taken over 10
oil flow stations and would not abandon them until their leader was
freed from custody. “We will kill every iota of oil operations in the
Niger Delta.
Western Louisiana have an immediate problem, and the rest of us have a
relatively intermediate term problem. And it has to do with the
immediate availability of gasoline. As Rita came close to shore,
gas stations all over the Gulf Coast began to run out of gas. It was
not really a long-term worry since the refineries were right there and
could resupply. But now they are no longer on-stream. The folks
that run them have followed instructions and are gone for about a week.
It is going to take some time to do the safety checks and repairs
needed to get the facilities back to order, and then gas can, to a
limited degree, begin to flow again.
But we have lost the stock reserve that has been eaten up in matching
the lost production from Katrina, and so now it will be more difficult
to bring up the refineries. Not (and this is the good news) because of
the sustained damage, (because the word running around is that this has
been much less than anticipated) but because they are going to start
running out of crude.