Oil Storm is a 2005 television simulation portraying a future oil-shortage crisis in the United States, precipitated by a hurricane destroying key parts of the United States' oil infrastructure. The program was an attempt to depict what would happen if the highly oil-dependent country was suddenly faced with gasoline costing upwards of $7 to $8 per gallon (as opposed to the national average of around $2 per gallon when the show first aired). Directed by James Erskine and written by Erskine and Caroline Levy, it originally aired on FX Networks on 5 June 2005, at 8 p.m. ET.
The crisis arises from a hurricane destroying an important pipeline at Port Fourchon in Louisiana, a tanker collision closing a busy port, terrorist attacks and tension with Saudi Arabia over the oil trade, and other fictional events. The program followed the lives of several people - the owners of a mom-and-pop convenience store, a paramedic, stock market and oil analysts, government officials, and others - and includes a substantial amount of human drama.
Plot
Hurricane Julia, a Category 4 hurricane, strikes the Gulf of Mexico, making a direct hit on New Orleans, Louisiana, killing thousands of people and causing severe damage. Large numbers of offshore oil rigs in the Gulf, and a major pipeline and the primary nerve center of the Gulf Coast petroleum industry at Port Fourchon, Louisiana are destroyed. It shows how the effects of that disaster could have significant consequences throughout the United States, even in areas far removed from landfall.
While the loss of life and property in the storm is staggering (with the death toll in the thousands and the damage in the billions), the greater impact is on the crippled energy industry. Due to the destruction at Port Fourchon and in the Gulf, oil prices skyrocket from $55 to $77 per barrel, and the United States government is forced to take immediate action to rebuild the Gulf's energy infrastructure. Once the storm passes, the government starts to rebuild the infrastructure at Port Fourchon (requiring a minimum of eight months) and repair or replace damaged offshore rigs (requiring a similar amount of time). Also, shipping that normally goes through Port Fourchon is rerouted to the Port of Houston; Houston's port facilities are open around-the-clock with higher-than-usual throughput, with attendant higher risk of accident.
With widespread gas lines and prices over $3.00 per gallon, the U.S. persuades Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production by 1m barrels a day. The Saudi decision to aid America causes a backlash among a restive Muslim population already energized because of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Local terrorists stage an attack on an upscale shopping mall in Riyadh which (after intervention by Saudi special forces) kills about 300 Americans associated with multinational oil companies. This attack leads the U.S. to send troops to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the oil crisis escalates when two large tankers collide in the narrow Houston Ship Channel, shutting down the Channel.
Once winter sets in, gas lines take a back seat to critical shortages of heating oil during a bitterly cold winter, with thousands dying in the cold. Some good news comes after the Houston Ship Channel is reopened, but on Christmas Day, the same Saudi terrorists blow up sections of the mammoth Ras Tanura refinery complex, killing 142 U.S. soldiers who were protecting the Saudi oil infrastructure; among the casualties is the eldest son of the convenience store owners. Oil prices reach $153 per barrel, and gas prices top $8 per gallon.
Meanwhile, with a government budget crisis due to military and economic pressures, farm spending is cut dramatically, leading to a subplot in which the social and political effects of this are explored. A well-renowned agricultural leader organizes a 750,000-farmer march on Washington, leading to clashes with police and the leader being taken into custody.
In the spring, the U.S. makes a deal with Russia to send 8 million barrels (1,300,000m3) of oil by tanker, but the oil companies involved subsequently make a deal with China, which, equally hungry for oil and with greater financial reserves, outbids the U.S. This leaves America in a state of chaos, as well leading to soul-searching on whether China has now become the world's economic superpower. The country considers fast-tracking development of alternative energy sources, but there is little that can be done in the short-term to alter an economy structurally dependent on cheap foreign oil. Later, the U.S. government, showing unexpected diplomatic skill, resurrects the Russian oil deal by agreeing to a $16 billion long-term investment in its oil industry, and the China-bound tankers change course to the United States.
The crisis finally eases a year after Hurricane Julia, with Port Fourchon back at 80-percent capacity, the strategic petroleum reserve being replenished and tensions in Saudi Arabia stabilized. Oil prices drop from their highs at the height of the crisis to $73 per barrel, and gas prices nearing the $4 per gallon mark and dropping. However, the country has been through a stress as great as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and now knowing that relying on OPEC for most of its foreign oil imports makes the United States vulnerable, Americans will never take cheap oil for granted again.
Real-world events partly anticipated by the film
Hurricane Katrina
The events of Hurricane Katrina, its economic impact and the ensuing price increases nearly parallel some of the events in the movie. However, the damage to US oil infrastructure was less severe than in the film, and the lack of the compounding events (shutdown of Port of Houston, loss of some of Saudi Arabia's supply) means the consequences of Katrina are much less than of the fictional Julia. However, especially given the coincidence of dates (in the film, Julia strikes in early September 2005), the similarity of the early impact of the two storms has been noted.
On 28 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina was on a direct path to hit Port Fourchon and New Orleans. Many of the initial scenes of Hurricane Julia were playing out in real life with Hurricane Katrina, such as the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, the opening of the Superdome as shelter, and the changing of traffic to contraflow. On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina did not directly hit Port Fourchon but across Barataria Bay at Buras, but nonetheless some oil rigs were damaged. Saudi Arabia agreed to increase oil production to help.
On 30 August 2005, many gas stations raised prices by a considerable amount putting most of America over $3.00/gallon, as shown in the movie. On 1 September 2005, gas stations throughout the country began to run out of fuel due to worries of mass shortages. Some stations in Atlanta, Georgia sold gas at nearly $6/gallon. Most of this was due to panic buying, as noted in the film, rather than physical shortage. Subsequently, as the extent of the damage became clearer, prices eased.
The casualty numbers shown for New Orleans is also startlingly close to the casualties of Katrina. The movie shows a little more than 1700 while the official number for Katrina is 1833.
Automotive layoffs
Both Ford and GM announced layoffs and plant closings in late 2005 and early 2006. However, while one reason for the layoffs was increased gasoline prices, it was not the sole reason for the layoffs. In addition, the layoffs were on a much smaller scale than the ones shown in the film.
There was also the 2009 GM crisis in which General Motors requested and received Federal assistance. Unlike the mocumentary[citation needed], GM did not die, it seemed "too big to fail" because maintaining automotive competition and the status quo seemed more important.
Attacks on Saudi refineries
In the film, al-Qaeda makes a terrorist attack on the oil facilities at Ras Tanura. On 24 February 2006 al-Qaeda attacked the nearby facility at Abqaiq, though no damage was inflicted on the facilities themselves.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an emergency stockpile of petroleum maintained by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is the largest publicly known emergency supply in the world; its underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas have capacity for 714 million barrels (113,500,000 m3). The United States started the petroleum reserve in 1975 to mitigate future supply disruptions as part of the international Agreement on an International Energy Program, after oil supplies were interrupted during the 1973–1974 oil embargo.
The 1979 oil crisis, also known as the 1979 Oil Shock or Second Oil Crisis, was an energy crisis caused by a drop in oil production in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Although the global oil supply only decreased by approximately four percent, the oil markets' reaction raised the price of crude oil drastically over the next 12 months, more than doubling it to $39.50 per barrel ($248/m3). The sudden increase in price was connected with fuel shortages and long lines at gas stations similar to the 1973 oil crisis.
Port Fourchon is Louisiana’s southernmost port, located on the southern tip of Lafourche Parish, on the Gulf of Mexico. It is a seaport, with significant petroleum industry traffic from offshore Gulf oil platforms and drilling rigs as well as the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port pipeline. Fourchon's primary service markets are domestic deepwater oil and gas exploration, drilling, and production in the Gulf. Port Fourchon currently services over 90% of the Gulf of Mexico's deepwater oil production. There are over 600 oil platforms within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. This area furnishes 16 to 18 percent of the US oil supply.
Ras Tanura is a city in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia located on a peninsula extending into the Persian Gulf. The name Ras Tanura applies both to a gated Saudi Aramco employee compound and to an industrial area further out on the peninsula that serves as a major oil port and oil operations center for Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world. Today, the compound has about 3,200 residents, with a few Americans and British expats.
Matthew Roy Simmons was founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International, and was a prominent figure in the field of peak oil. Simmons was motivated by the 1973 energy crisis to create an investment banking firm catering to oil companies. He served as an energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and was a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hurricane preparedness in New Orleans has been an issue since the city's early settlement because of its location.
The economic effects of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Mississippi in late August 2005, were far-reaching.
Hurricane Rita was the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Gulf of Mexico and the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which included three of the top ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes in terms of barometric pressure ever recorded, Rita was the seventeenth named storm, tenth hurricane, and fifth major hurricane of the 2005 season. It was also the earliest-forming 17th named storm in the Atlantic until Tropical Storm Rene in 2020. Rita formed near The Bahamas from a tropical wave on September 18, 2005 that originally developed off the coast of West Africa. It moved westward, and after passing through the Florida Straits, Rita entered an environment of abnormally warm waters. Moving west-northwest, it rapidly intensified to reach peak winds of 180 mph (285 km/h), achieving Category 5 status on September 21. However, it weakened to a Category 3 hurricane before making landfall in Johnson's Bayou, Louisiana, between Sabine Pass, Texas and Holly Beach, Louisiana, with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Rapidly weakening over land, Rita degenerated into a large low-pressure area over the lower Mississippi Valley by September 26th.
For further details see the "Energy crisis" series by Facts on File.
Petroleum has been a major industry in the United States since shortly after the oil discovery in the Oil Creek area of Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. The industry includes exploration, production, processing (refining), transportation, and marketing of natural gas and petroleum products. In 2018, the U.S. became the worlds largest crude oil producer, producing 15% of global crude oil, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. The leading oil-producing area in the United States in 2019 was Texas, followed by the offshore federal zone of the Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota and New Mexico. In 2020, the top five U.S. oil producing states were Texas (43%), North Dakota (10.4%), New Mexico (9.2%), Oklahoma (4.1%), and Colorado (4.0%).
The proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia are reportedly the second largest in the world, estimated in 2017 to be 268 billion barrels, including 2.5 Gbbl in the Saudi–Kuwaiti neutral zone. This would correspond to more than 50 years of production at current rates. In the oil industry, an oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons, which is about 159 litres, or 35 imperial gallons. The oil reserves are predominantly found in the Eastern Province. These reserves were apparently the largest in the world until Venezuela announced they had increased their proven reserves to 297 Gbbl in January 2011. The Saudi reserves are about one-fifth of the world's total conventional oil reserves. A large fraction of these reserves comes from a small number of very large oil fields, and past production amounts to 40% of the stated reserves.
Energy in Saudi Arabia involves petroleum and natural gas production, consumption, and exports, and electricity production. Saudi Arabia is the world's leading oil producer and exporter. Saudi Arabia's economy is petroleum-based; oil accounts for 90% of the country's exports and nearly 75% of government revenue. The oil industry produces about 45% of Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product, against 40% from the private sector. Saudi Arabia has per capita GDP of $20,700. The economy is still very dependent on oil despite diversification, in particular in the petrochemical sector.
Sources include: Dow Jones (DJ), New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and the Washington Post (WP).
United States Coast Guard Air Station Houston is a United States Coast Guard Air Station located 15 miles (24 km) southeast of downtown Houston, Texas on board the Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base (JRB).
Hurricane Harvey was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting $125 billion in damage, primarily from catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding in the Houston metropolitan area and Southeast Texas; this made the storm the costliest natural disaster recorded in Texas at the time. It was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005, ending a record 12-year span in which no hurricanes made landfall at the intensity of a major hurricane throughout the country. In a four-day period, many areas received more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain as the system slowly meandered over eastern Texas and adjacent waters, causing unprecedented flooding. With peak accumulations of 60.58 in (1,539 mm), in Nederland, Texas, Harvey was the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States. The resulting floods inundated hundreds of thousands of homes, which displaced more than 30,000 people and prompted more than 17,000 rescues.
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