Posted on 05/04/2014 6:12:52 AM PDT by thackney
The government is establishing its first emergency reserves of gasoline to address future fuel disruptions in the New York City area and New England like those caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the Energy Department announced Friday.
The two reserves totaling 1 million gallons of gasoline will be stored in leased commercial terminals around New York Harbor and Boston, the Energy Department said. The $200 million project will be paid with proceeds from a sale of crude oil from the government’s emergency reserves on the Gulf Coast. Official said they hope to have the new gasoline reserves in place by the end of summer, before the start of the 2014 hurricane season.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a conference call Friday with reporters that the facilities were part of a larger effort to prepare for the consequences of global warming and “the effects of climate change we already see occurring at home.”
The 2012 storm knocked out refineries, damaged terminals and left gasoline stations without power, leading to severe gasoline storages.
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelfix.com ...
U.S. to set up emergency gasoline stockpile for Northeast
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/02/us-usa-gasoline-new-york-idUSBREA410CO20140502
excerpt below:
...Sandy battered the Northeast corridor in October 2012, destroying homes and buildings, closing refineries and disrupting gasoline supplies.
The storm prompted the administration to tap the heating oil reserve for the first time since it was established in 2000.
But with power lines down and more than 40 terminals in New York Harbor closed due to water damage, getting gasoline to consumers was also an issue.
The Energy Information Administration estimated in the days after the storm that as many as 67 percent of the gas stations in the New York metropolitan area were not open, either because they had no power for their pumps or had not been able to take delivery of fuel.
Lawmakers pressed the Obama administration to ensure the fuel crunch would not be repeated.
Senator Charles Schumer, of New York, said scarce gasoline supplies created panic in his state after Sandy hit, as people waited hours in line for fuel at the stations that were operating.
“This was adding salt into the wounds,” said Schumer, who pressed for a regional reserve after the storm.
The department will lease space from commercial storage companies for the emergency stockpile, where it will be turned over as part of the storage facilities’ stocks.
Moniz and Schumer acknowledged that the reserve was only one part of the solution to preventing future fuel disruptions.
One issue the reserve will not be able to address is how to overcome the electricity outages such as those caused by Sandy that shuttered gas stations...
New US regional emergency gasoline reserve established
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3337183/Latest-News/New-US-regional-emergency-gasoline-reserve-established.html
...The new reserve complements the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, a one million barrles supply of diesel for the Northeast. Emergency withdrawals from NEHHOR were used for the first time in response to Superstorm Sandy to supply first responders and emergency generators in the region. Today’s announcement builds on the Obama Administration’s broader commitment to enable a more secure and resilient energy infrastructure....
...As laid out in President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the Administration has launched the federal government’s first Quadrennial Energy Review process to address the challenge of leveraging America’s domestic energy resources while strengthening U.S. energy security. The first installment of the QER review will focus on the United States’ infrastructure for transmitting, storing and delivering energy.
As part of this process, the Energy Department will conduct a series of regional fuel resiliency studies to analyze the specific challenges faced by different parts of the country that are vulnerable to a variety of weather-related natural disasters that could potentially affect energy supply infrastructure. Because of the interdependencies inherent to the US energy infrastructure, even where regional refined product reserves may play a role in enhancing fuel resiliency, they will be but one part of a system intended to minimize potential disruptions in fuel distribution. The Department is also continuing to work at the federal, state and local level to enable more resilient electric grid networks in communities across the country.
They better be careful. Too many reserves could drive the price at the pump down. /s
Just as one example, Central Pennsylvania is roughly the same distance from Philadelphia as New York harbor and far less likely to be socked by a hurricane.
Shut down still more of the evil coal burning generating plants, that'll fix it.
Pump stations along the major pipelines that feed the region with fuel were left dead, meaning the gasoline couldn’t flow up from the Gulf Coast. Tankers laden with fuel were stranded out in the New York Harbor, unable to deliver their product because of the damage that had been done to the import terminals. In short, the entire Northeast energy distribution system was knocked out. For days. It didn’t return to normal for more than a month.
So it’s going to cost us 200 dollars a gallon to store gas?Somebody is getting rich off the taxpayer again.
Just don’t let the terrorists or the other crazies find out about this..
How would it be different from the commercial tanks that already exist in the same place?
And those are the same tanks they are going to use. They are not building new tanks, but leasing existing one, at least at this time.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot. But it’s enough to provide emergency vehicles the fuel they need to operate, something they had problems with during Sandy.
Good observation. I suspect for $200 a gallon, we could use helicopters to deliver to anywhere in the US it was needed.
That’s a lot of Stabil.
I wonder about that too. I’ve been searching for articles talking about the long term storage aspect.
I would think it could be set up to constant cycle stock through it to keep it fresh, essentially constantly buying and selling to the market. But I would not want the government doing that, I would expect that to be constant skimming operation.
Well isn’t that just special?! Liberals will obstruct every effort to increase the nation’s energy supply and distribution capability, but they’ll happily seize part of that self-limited supply for New York and New England.
Sounds to me like more control and cronyism from the totalitarians. So nice to have our very own Nazis.
A stupid law to fix another stupid law. There would never be any shortages if they would simply repeal the so-called “price gouging” laws. Let the price go to the market level and there will be all the gas you want to buy.
That’s my first thought too. How long in bulk storage does the stuff stay fresh?
Maybe, since this may be reserved for governmental use, it will be ethanol free.
In commercial bulk storage, many locations use a blanket gas to keep minimal pressure that prevents the exchange with air. Also floating roofs are used in some tanks to keep liquid only in contact with the fluids.
That may eliminate the issues, or greatly extend it out.
NYC needs more targets!!
One East Coast trader said he was eager to learn what the Reid vapor pressure would be for the stored gasoline, adding that he wanted more clarity of specifications for the gasoline and how it would be used.
“I am guessing that would have to be summer grade,” he said.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said gasoline held in the reserve “will be turned over as part of commercial transactions,” he said. “We cannot store the same molecules for five years.”
The DOE has committed to funding and maintaining the reserve for five years, but Moniz did not elaborate on what would happen after the five years are up.
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