(Adds key points about West Hackberry and SPR capacity)
WASHINGTON, 31 Aug (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Energy said Monday that a strategic oil reserve site in Louisiana had “suffered extensive damage” from Hurricane Laura and that detailed estimates of the damage caused will be released later this week.
The ministry closed two of the four SPR crude oil sites before Laura landed early Thursday morning.The West Hackberry site in Louisiana does not have to advertise electricity, but “there is no risk to the integrity of geologically sealed underground caverns and no danger of contamination.”or fear of spills, ” said a branch official.
The other site that was shut down, which is located in Big Hill, Texas, is back up and running and fully operational, and made a past-scheduled oil delivery over the weekend, he said.
Nine oil corporations this spring, adding Exxon Mobil Corp. Chevron Corp and Alon USA Inc, leased an area to buy more than 20 million barrels of oil in reserve to deal with garage shortages as the coronavirus pandemic eased. demand for fuel.
West Hackberry has 21 caverns and a garage capacity of 220 million barrels of crude oil.Lately, the DPR has about 650 million barrels of crude basically acid, well above the point required by foreign agreements.
The RPD is ready to handle all emergency exchange requests from the refineries due to Laura through its Big Hill, Bryan Mound and Bayou Choctaw sites, he said, the reserve has not won any requests for such deliveries.
Washington built the DPR in the 1970s after the Arab oil embargo raised gas costs and broke the U.S. economy.He has organized emergency sales and oil loans to power corporations after storms.More recently, the branch lent 5.2 million barrels of oil after Hurricane Harvey.flooded Texas in 2017.
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