New York – The government is establishing its first emergency reserves of gasoline to address future fuel disruptions in the New York City area and New England like those caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the Energy Department announced Friday.
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The two reserves totaling 1 million gallons of gasoline will be stored in leased commercial terminals around New York Harbor and Boston, the Energy Department said. The $200 million project will be paid with proceeds from a sale of crude oil from the government’s emergency reserves on the Gulf Coast. Official said they hope to have the new gasoline reserves in place by the end of summer, before the start of the 2014 hurricane season.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a conference call Friday with reporters that the facilities were part of a larger effort to prepare for the consequences of global warming and “the effects of climate change we already see occurring at home.”
The 2012 storm knocked out refineries, damaged terminals and left gasoline stations without power, leading to severe gasoline storages.
“Like sandbags and stockpiles of food and medicine, this gasoline reserve is what the Northeast needs to be ready for supercharged storms from climate change,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.
However, the reserves have two shortcomings: They will not solve the problem of widespread power loss and flooding such as that caused by Sandy. Power is needed to operate pumps for getting gasoline into cars. And a million gallons represents only a small fraction of the 13.8 million gallons of gasoline used daily in New York state alone.
The reserves are similar to a million-gallon government reserve of diesel fuel for the Northeast. It was first tapped during Sandy to supply first responders and emergency generators during the storm.
The Energy Department also operates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve along the Gulf Cost, which stores 696 million gallons of crude oil under salt domes. It was set up after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. That reserve has only been tapped three times, most recently in June 2011 when President Barack Obama sold off some oil to deal with supply disruptions due to unrest in the Middle East.
According to the governments own web sites, this is sad joke and it’s a myth to think that such reserves can help, for more than a few hours at the most (not even enough for 1 day of NYC usage).
Here are the Statistics for the US Governments own web site: of the US Energy . Information Administration (EIA)
“In 2012, about 133 BILLION gallons of gasoline where consumed in the United States, a DAILY average of about 365.65 million gallons”
That means that in the entire USA we consume 365 MILLION gallons * * * PER DAY * * * !
To even THINK that 1 Million Gallons of reserve can possibly help anyone for more than a fraction of one day, is ridiculous and it’;s shocking that intelligent US Government officials can use the math of a 3d grader to figure it out.
The Total of these TWO reserves, is only ONE million gallons.
That means that if instead of building these 2 reserves, – if instead they had built 365 times has many of them, it could only supply 1 days worth of the US Gasoline needs!
As it is now, (when the project is completed) it will perhaps be able to supply the gasoline needs of the USA for a few MINUTES of use,