Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Larv

This has got to be one of the worst ideas the oil industry ever came up with. Chevron’s “inherited” crude-oil storage facility at Drift River sits smack dab in the middle of Mt. Redoubt’s eruption plume.

I’m not sure I agree it’s the worst idea the oil industry ever came up with, but IMHO it’s one of the new business’s most underreported stories! Thanks, Larv, for bringing it up.

Originally Posted by Larv

It’s not good to store your precious energy reserves downstream from an active volcano.

If you look at the Drift River Terminal Facility surroundings – the northwest shore of Cook Inlet – you’ll see there isn’t a lot of it that isn’t in near a volcano, so I’m not sure any location on that shore is a good place for any permanent structure.

Originally Posted by Larv

Oil, lava and water do not mix well; they must have known that. What were they thinking anyway?

Apparently its not oil, lava and water that don’t mix well, but oil tanks, mud, and water, as the Mt. Redoubt eruptions don’t produce lava flows, but mud and water floods – “lahars”. Not quite as bad as lava, but quite able to demolish oil tanks, or almost any other building in their path.

Interestingly, according to reports linked from the preceeding wikipedia article, something like this happened 1989/1990, damaging the facility and resulting in the construction of dikes to protect the oil tanks, which so far have protected them from the lahars and flash floods caused by these most recent eruptions.

Originally Posted by Larv

Some say it could be Alaska’s next Exxon Valdez.

As of 4/10, the bay should be safe from oil spills from the Drift River terminal, because it’s been emptied via tanker ship of its 87,600 barrels of crude oil (it’s a fairly small holding, not a large storage facility). Plans to ballast its tanks with seawater to prevent them from being uprooted if their dikes are overwhelmed by lahar or water flooding were abandoned because no plan to dispose of the contaminated water afterwards was feasible, so the tanks are now full of mostly air, and very vulnerable.