Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Nine: Oil and Gas 109opposed to the options that have been taken by our allies in Japan and [in] Europe.These countries have taken a much more dispersed approach to storage...of conventionalpetroleum fuels, ranging from crude oil to refined products. 90This approach—spotting relatively small amounts of storage of diverse petroleumproducts at many sites near the final customers—greatly reduces emergencydependence on pipelines, refineries, and other vulnerable “upstream” facilitieswhich, as will be shown, are at least as vulnerable as a centralized storage depot.Oil refineriesOil refineries are typically the most vulnerable, capital-intensive, and indispensibleelement of the oil system downstream of the wellhead. Since mostdevices which burn oil are designed to use specific refined products, not crude oilitself, it is not possible to substitute other modes for refining as it is for oil delivery.The refining industry tended to grow up near the oilfields and the major markets.Since three-fourths of domestic oil is lifted in only four states—Texas,Louisiana, Alaska, and California 91 —it is understandable that over half the refinerycapacity is concentrated in Texas (with twenty-seven percent in 1978),Louisiana, and California. Including Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jerseywould account for more than sixty-nine percent of the 1978 national total. 92 Ofnearly three hundred major refineries, there were twenty-two sites which each hadat least one percent of national capacity, the largest having over three and a halfpercent. Many of these depend on shared pipelines, ports, and repair facilities.Local concentrations of refinery capacity and allied plants are remarkablyheavy. For example, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, contains one of thelargest U.S. oil refineries (an Exxon unit handling half a million barrels perday, just smaller than the giant Baytown, Texas plant). The same parish containsmany petrochemical plants, Kaiser Aluminum, docks, river terminals,and two major river bridges. Through the same area run the Plantation andColonial pipelines, carrying most the East Coast’s and much of the South’srefined products. 93 Thus a nuclear bomb on New Orleans could simultaneouslykill most of its inhabitants (including many with unique technical skills),flood the city, destroy control centers for offshore oil and gas operations,destroy many petroleum company headquarters, stop traffic both across andon the Mississippi River (isolating petroleum workers from their homes orplants, depending on the time of day), damage a shipyard and refineries, anddestroy port facilities. The Office of Technology Assessment, working withthe Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, found that destruction of the seventy-sevenlargest U.S. oil refineries would eliminate two-thirds of U.S. refiningcapacity and “shatter the American economy” 94 —as well as destroying, in the