Stunning Drone Footage Of The Midwest Flooding Wreaking Havoc On US Oil
After the first deadly winter storm this season, now come the floods: the near-record water level across the U.S. Midwest has disrupted everything from oil to agriculture, forcing pipelines, terminals and grain elevators to close. This is the worst flood in the region since May 2011, when rising water on the Mississippi and its tributaries deluged cities, slowed barge traffic and threatened refinery and chemical operations and is just shy of the worst flood of breaking 30-year records.
According to Bloomberg, the floods have killed at least 20 people and shut hundreds of roads across Missouri and Illinois, according to AccuWeather Inc. Rain-swollen rivers will set records in the Mississippi River basin through much of January. Fifty miles (80 kilometers) of the Illinois River remain closed, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as five miles of the Mississippi River.
Additionally, the Coast Guard issued a high-water safety advisory for 566 miles of Mississippi River between Caruthersville, Missouri, and Natchez, Mississippi. It also instituted high-water towing limitations near Morgan City, Louisiana, for vessels heading south that are 600 feet or shorter, it said in a statement.
And while water levels have started to recede in some areas, closures and restrictions remain in place for safety, said Jonathan Lally, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard. “The high water is kind of moving in a big glob and it’s on its way down,” he said Friday in a telephone interview from New Orleans.
The impact of the flood has hit farmers, with hog producers in southern Illinois calling other farmers, hoping to find extra barn space to relocate pigs. Processors are sending additional trucks to retrieve market-ready pigs, she said. In one case, an overflowing creek took out electricity and made roads impassable, causing 2,000 pigs to drown.
But the flood's most adverse economic impact may be on oil, which may see an even greater increase in stockpiles as a result, pushing the price of oil even lower.
As Bloomberg adds, so far the biggest oil shutdown involves Enbridge Inc.’s Ozark pipeline, which was booked to carry about 200,000 barrels a day this month to Wood River, Illinois, from Cushing, Oklahoma. The outage of the section under the Mississippi River may further add to stockpiles at Cushing that reached a record high last week.
"The closure of the Ozark pipeline will just add to the stocks at Cushing,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil economist at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London.
Also shuttered is Spectra Energy Corp.’s 145,000 barrel-a-day Platte oil pipeline between Guernsey, Wyoming, and Wood River which remains closed as a precaution because of the river’s condition.
Aside from closed pipelines, energy companies have also shut down various terminals in the affected region. Kinder Morgan shut its Cahokia terminal in Sauget, Illinois, and its Cora terminal in Rockwood, Illinois. Cahokia handles chemicals, coal, cement and metals while Cora handles coal and petcoke, according to the company’s website. Kinder Morgan declared a force majeure, which protects it from liability for contracts that go unfulfilled for reasons beyond its control.
“We plan to return to service as soon as possible after the water recedes,” Wheatley said Friday in an e-mailed statement.
Exxon Mobil Corp. shut its fuel terminal on the Mississippi at Memphis and is taking precautions to secure the facility, spokesman Todd Spitler said Friday in an e-mail. Impacts to customers “will be minimized as alternative supply will be provided,” he said.
The worst case scenario would be if the floodwaters reach Louisiana, which has 10 refineries in the Baton Rouge-New Orleans area with a combined capacity of about 2.5 million barrels, or 13 percent of the nation’s capacity, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston.
Refineries including Exxon’s facility in Baton Rouge and Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s in Garyville, Louisiana, will probably try to get their crude and ship out their products if they can before the river levels rise, Lipow said.
In short, this Midwest flood will have a significant impact on US oil transportation and logistics, which in turn will make the already acute problem of oil storage even worse, and comes at the worst possible time, just as Cushing inventories are already at record high (with about 10mm barrels of capacity left) and seasonally rising fast, and when the price of oil is very sensitive to even the smallest (forget record) builds in inventory.
So without further ado, here is the stunning drone's eye footage of this near-record flood, courtesy of the WSJ.
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John Kerry: An un-named country’s submarine has been spotted in the flooded area in the Mid-West. ;-)
Looney
And the Russians have released a report to help us solve the problem. The Kremlin analysis reads "You dumbasses built in a flood zone"
"An un-named country’s submarine has been spotted in the flooded area in the Mid-West."
Headed for MONTANA, no doubt.
Top tip - when building a house on a flood plain, build it on stilts.
The constant flooding and re-building falls under the “Broken Window” theory. I think? ;-)
Looney
Is that in any way similar to the 'idiocy theory"?
" you dumbasses built in the flood zone..."
Actually, developers have LOTS of power of local zoning boards and almost always get their way thru coercion plus a few under-the-table-$$$-enticements that in China they call "bribery" and "corruption" but here the NAR community calls it, "just do'n bidniz." They basically allow them to build with the proviso those buyers will get flood insurance which is heavily subsidized by no other then you and me.
It is a stupid place to put a river. Beside all those houses and major cities.
Just wait til they fine all the homeowners and businesses for polluting the river that flooded.
A small section of the "bad part of town" sits an often flooded zone. Maybe 200 old, small houses...probably $90k average value...so you're looking at ~$18,000,000 worth of property...the City/Core Engineers will spend $120,000,000 in the next decade to "mitigate flooding" in that area and others along the same river in the county.
I don't know what was spent to protect those 200 homes, but it took them a year to build a massive levee to protect the area...willing to bet it was more than $18M. At what's totally fucking stupid is that when you stop one area from flooding, you push water into another area...so now that other area needs "more spending" to "mitigate flooding"...absolutely insane...nothing but a HUGE money grab by our Crony Corporate Government.
More proof of "Global Climate Change"!
Hell, we broke our all time RAINFALL record for December! It suppose to SNOW in December...But all we's got was RAIN!
Smashed the old record set back in the 1870's...no, what, wait? "Global Climate Change" was raging back in the 1870's?
Local weather guy is a "Global Climate Change" believer...good for business I'm sure...he took on the issue of so many records set in the 1850-1900 era for our state...he said, "I suspect their measuring equipment wasn't very accurate"...yeah, right. How hard is it to measure snow and rain? And for temps, they're all "reasonable" for the state...it's not like our old records are a 140 degrees and 50 below...we often get close to those old records...so, weather data stretching back ~140 years show nothing "unusual"...just cycles..imagine that.
PS> Global climate change is real and NORMAL! Where I am sitting right now, at one point in history, was 150' below a shallow sea! You can walk our rivers and find SEASHELLS; we're a 1000 miles from the nearest ocean! That's some serious fucking climate change before man ever burned a stick on this planet.
Trade that sub in for a recreational vehicle.
Pro Tip: Don't drive your Tesla through water deeper than 3 inches.
Unles it spontaneously combusts.
Last spotted in Arizona, so I suspect California is the target; a new route from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
Montana...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ialhaxhr7iA
TILE THOSE FIELDS BITCHEEZ. run that excess to the river and drain moar low lying areas. yup, farmers unite and get moar yield. also suck all that ground water from the aquafirs at a rate way beyond replenishment. ha, and the runoff doesn't get a chance to even get to the aquafirs. and the flooding runs valuable topsoil on to the gulf with said runoff nutients fucking the gulf ecosystem. yup a very sustainable plan, ha....
edit, i left monsanto out of above rant; another complete rant in itsself, another day for that, plez-your welcome bitcheez...
Monsatan would have been a nice bonus actually.
It's the Corporate Farms that "Tile those fields" the most. Small farmers build Ponds to HOLD the water on the property. Great for watering livestock plus you have your own personal fishing hole.
Corporate farming has been a disaster...yeah, more/cheaper food, but it's shit food...Buy milk, eggs, beef from a small farmer then compare that to what you get at your corporate grocery store...night and day difference...corporate milk ~$4/gallon...small farm milk ~$5/gallon...believe me, that extra dollar buys you $10 MORE IN QUALITY AND TASTE!
Thank you ... someone tell the UK.
Ha Ha! +100
Does this mean that Warren Buffett's oil trains of death will not run? Small towns in America and Canada may not be incinerated from a Buffett train accident?
Sad.
When the Government (that means you) backs up insurance companies in flood zones, what do you expect?
Did you register that fucker. HAHAHAHA
Contrary to popular belief, destruction is bullish. Rebuilding is future growth and indebtedness!!
They do not need the Dutch oil company but the Dutch dredgers to build some decent dikes.
Decent is an understatement. I vividly remember seeing some of the dykes and storm barriers that are part of the "Delta Works". Masterful feats of engineering on the part of your country.
We're about to elect an indecent dyke.
No,no, no, can't do that anymore. That would interfere with nature and flood plains. Water has the right to go anywhere it wants (not you so much).
Nuuuz Flash
Moar Evidence of Water Level Rise Due to Manmade Global Warming
Nah, they sorted all that out last month, we're saved now.
Watch the weather manipulation, how a huge storm turns into fluffy popcorn clouds or the opposite, think it's normal?
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/dml/comp/goes/nhem/rb.html
cool website to watch weather & check out cams by zipcode:
https://www.windyty.com/?44.182,-124.014,1
Also England is getting the brunt of weather control gone whacko, soon the evil global cabal is going to fess up on their "Solar Radiation Management" scheme as a form of cooling the planet. In the meantime....enjoy sucking up all that nano aluminum, strontium & barium... ;->
dude, get an education
Strontium, Strontium, Strontium Ninety fall-out
Will get you even underground;
Now if you want some Strontium, Strontium Ninety,
There's plenty enough to go around.
What will we get from radiation?
No necks, two necks or maybe three;
Each one will have his own mutation;
Nobody else will look like me!
I rember this from when I was around 14 years old.
So the lack of delivery of oil won't cause a spike in oil prices?
LOL, the music makes it sound as if the area is doomed forever. Of course, i'm not real sure what's going on with that nuclear wasted dump fire and also I won't be buying gas at the shell.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/study-finds-radioactive-waste-at-st-louis-ar...
Hi can anyone tell me the policy when it comes to "dredging" in the United States?
you mean dredging our wallets?
If it benefits you, it's illegal. If a large company wants to do it and they've paid their "dues" then it's legal.
The rest of the planet rejoices when USSA gets a message from Gawd.
Well.. let me guess, gasoline/diesel price would increase because of refineries shutdown!!
Uhuh...
Just like this Utility jacking price (from wolfstreet).
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/01/01/happy-new-year-americas-largest-utility...
Well.. how's capitalism serves you, dudes??
"Well.. how's capitalism serves you, dudes??"
That is not capitalism. In a capitalist system there would be competition. Utilities are granted monopoly status by the government.
These are pretty far away from capitalism.
"How high's the water mama? She said, five feet high and rising."
"How high's the water papa? He said, six feet high and rising."
chickens are sleepin in the willow trees
And the wind keeps picking up speeeeeed.
Robt. Zimmerman, aka B. Dylan
Too bad it did not flood out the black areas.....dammit...could have whooshed out some serious asswipes...
Over here in Britain we are too suffering from floods and here in this link below {if it works} will show the message from all our main stream media from a very climate change sceptic country. Do you in America dredge your rivers?
UK weather: Cause of flooding that the Government would rather keep to itself - Mirror Online
Yes we dredge our major rivers to keep them open for navigation. Dredging, navigation and flood control are primary missions of our Corps of Engineers...
I like the part where they build jetties to protect the shoreline that creates eddies which erode them. I'm sure Krugman also approves.
Thank you.