Aug. 07, 2006 - 21:07 MDT

AT A BAD TIME

Dealt to us from the bottom of the deck, where all the bad cards come from. An item in the National Briefing section of the Rocky Mountain News this morning, quoted in full:

OIL PRODUCTION FROM NORTH SLOPE TO BE CUT IN HALF

ANCHORAGE -- "In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line."

"BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line."

"I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel."

"Once the field is shut down, BP said, oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day."

"That's nearly 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply, including imports, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data."

++++++++++++

In a time like this we need things like this like a hole in the head. And the heck of it is that we can't be pointing fingers at anybody on this item. I'm sure BP isn't deliberately doing this, costing them money as it is.

There could be a worse one but this is definitely news that comes AT A BAD TIME . . . . . . . . . . .

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