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.
Shut down still more of the evil coal burning generating plants, that'll fix it.