ExxonMobil and Abu Dhabi

Much more than a plan
Last year’s hurricanes in the Gulf of
Mexico left scars on the coast and
affected chemical markets worldwide,
but lessons learned from earlier storms
helped ExxonMobil employees respond
much faster this time around.
Photo by Guiseppe Barranco/The Beaumont Enterprise
Call it a worst-case scenario. A
major hurricane fills the Gulf of
Mexico and lands on the most
heavily industrialized stretch
of the upper Texas coast.
ExxonMobil’s Houston offices
lose power, and several of the
company’s manufacturing sites
are damaged. Specialty products
– some supporting global
supply networks – are suddenly
unavailable to customers in the
Americas, Europe and Asia.
Although it’s the kind of emergency
that ExxonMobil employees
plan and practice for each
year, only similar experiences
following the violent Gulf storms
of 2005 could fully prepare them
for the hurricanes of 2008.
“We prepare for this, but it was
difficult to anticipate the extent
of damage caused by Hurricane
Ike,” says Will Cirioli, ExxonMobil
Chemical Company regional
director, Americas, who also
heads the company’s Emergency
Support Group (ESG).
“One enhancement we made
to our emergency-response plan
after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
in 2005 was to add a regional
response team that can quickly
relocate our headquarters operations
from Houston to Dallas,”
he says. “Hurricane Ike was the
first time we had to put that plan
in motion.”
A measured response
The goal of ExxonMobil’s hurricane-response
plan is to secure
facilities, protect the public,
make sure employees are safe,
and continue serving customers.
The response is measured, following
plans that are made well
in advance.
“This is not a situation that
you make up as you go,” Cirioli
Boats moored for safety at the Port of Beaumont thrash wildly as Hurricane Ike roars ashore.
A ship captain estimated waters rose 11 feet at the port, almost lifting vessels onto their docks.
explains. “We make our decisions
long before there’s a
threat. When hurricanes do
threaten, our response is preprogrammed,
based on a series
of triggers that are dictated by
the storm.”
ExxonMobil operates many
oil and gas facilities, four large
refineries, two lube-oil blending
plants and nine major chemicalmanufacturing
sites along the
coast from Texas to Florida.
Some facilities can be shut
down in as little as 12 hours, but
others take two or three days,
so the moment a tropical storm
or hurricane threatens the Gulf
of Mexico, the ESG begins communicating
with all the sites and
monitoring the weather several
times a day.
By Tuesday, September 9,
there was enough certainty in
the forecast that Cirioli moved
Chemical’s ESG to Dallas. Other
Houston-based ExxonMobil
companies did the same, joining
forces with ExxonMobil’s
Regional Response Team, sharing
office space that is kept
ready year-round with all the
computers, supplies and phone
lines needed to run the global
business.
As Ike grew in size and
continued toward the Texas-
Louisiana coast, it triggered the
next stages of the emergencyresponse
plan. Generators,
food, water, radios and all the
other equipment needed during
recovery were pre-positioned
so they could be trucked in
quickly once the storm passed.
On Wednesday, plants started
shutting down. By noon Friday,
the ones nearest Houston were
bracing for the worst.
Story by Richard Cunningham
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