HOUSTON, July 21 (UPI) -- An "invisible hurricane" of oil refinery fires and other failures has helped push U.S. gas prices to current high levels, The New York Times said Saturday.
About one-third of the refineries in the country have been hit by everything from spills to power failures, analysts told the newspaper. The 150 refineries in the country are running at about 5 percent below normal, with one analyst calling the problem an "invisible hurricane," similar to Rita or Katrina in its effect.
"You have a system that is taxed to the limit," said Adam Robinson, an analyst at Lehman Brothers. "This is what happens when spare capacity is eroded."
Some of the problems are caused by maintenance delayed to make up for the dramatic drops in production following the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005.
In the first quarter this year, production was down 1.5 million barrels a day, compared with 700,000 to 900,000 barrels a day between 2001 and 2005. In the first quarter of 2006, with many refineries still recovering from the hurricanes, production was off 1.35 million barrels a day, the newspaper said.
