To restore oil and natural gas production in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the energy industry and federal government must focus on easing the plight of energy workers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, many of whose homes have been destroyed and/or are under water, so that they can return to platforms and drilling rigs, said a top official with a major pipeline group.

In the short term, “it’s all about trying to deal with people issues,” said Martin Edwards, vice president of legislative affairs for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), which represents interstate gas pipelines. He noted that many workers who are supposed to be producing energy currently are faced with more life-threatening issues of where to live and eat.

In the longer term, Congress needs to consider a more diversified energy supply scenario. “As a nation, we’ve put an awful lot of our eggs in one basket,” he told NGI.

Edwards reported that it “doesn’t appear that pipelines [along the Gulf Coast] sustained a lot of damage” from the hurricane. “The open question is when can production come back online.”

He said that so far reported damage to pipelines involves “easy stuff…nothing really critical to operations.” However, if processing facilities, which he called the gas equivalent to oil refineries, and pipeline compressors units sustained damage, this will be “more challenging” to repair.

Edwards said that pipelines are delivering natural gas that’s already in their systems or from onshore sources. He noted he has been in contact with the two pipelines that serve Florida, Florida Gas Transmission and Gulfstream, both of which are highly dependent on natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico. The two pipelines “are operating fairly well, but are anxious to get production online.”

In response to the production shortfall in the Gulf, he said that Florida utilities are starting to implement conservation programs by shutting off non-essential equipment.

©Copyright 2005Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.