Why was the Strategic Petroleum Reserve tapped?
Two words: Hurricane Ivan. The powerful storm cut a wide swath through the heart of America’s most important oil-producing region, the Gulf of Mexico. In its wake, a number of refiners found themselves short of crude. A few, including giant Royal Dutch Shell and the Hunt Brother’s Placid Refining, asked the Energy Dept. for additional supplies. The requests came in Monday, Sept. 20, and by Friday, Sept. 24, the first oil was being pumped from the reserve. Was Hurricane Ivan really that bad? Much of the oil-industry infrastructure in the Gulf had to be evacuated. Tankers were diverted, and a number of oil-producing platforms were damaged. Even today, two weeks after the storm, the region’s production is down nearly 30%. The U.S. Minerals Management Service estimates that 11.2 million barrels of production was curtailed, about 2% of the Gulf’s annual oil production. How much crude is involved in the draw-down? Placid received its full request of 300,000 barrels from the SPRO over the wee
