Jay Currie

I use caps because, if things go as they are looking to go tonight, Obama and Palin and Harper are all off the front pages for several days.

Hurricane Ike will hit around the Houston Ship Channel overnight. Chances are it will be a Cat2 storm which, in a different location on a different night would be no big deal. But tonight is an unusually high tide and Ike’s storm surge is looking like 20 feet.

When Katrina hit New Orleans the human effect was devastating and the economic loss significant. But, realistically, New Orleans was hardly a center of American industry. Galveston/Houston is. And one of the main industries there are refineries.

If those refineries are hit and if the Houston Ship Channel is damaged we are looking a significant gas shortages throughout the US for weeks and perhaps months.

Update: “Texas is home to 26 refineries that account for one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity. Most are clustered along the Gulf Coast near such cities as Houston, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi. Exxon Mobil Corp.’s plant in Baytown, outside Houston, is the nation’s largest refinery.” AP And in that same article the wholesale price of gasoline has spiked to $5.00 ahead of Ike’s arrival.

Which is likely to change the politics and the economics of the US, Canada and very possibly the world.

Update II: It looks as though we – and thankfully the people in Coastal Texas – made it through Ike. “But the vital Houston Ship Channel was not hit as hard as expected by a storm surge that could have caused far greater damage and swamped refineries.

“Fortunately the worst-case scenario that was spoken about, that was projected in some areas, did not occur,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry.” Reuters