Global Fastener News

Fastener Upgrades Part of Supply Security Overhaul

Jason Sandefur

MEDIA SPOTLIGHT
Editor’s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts that show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.

Fearing another year of severe storms, safety regulators in the Gulf of Mexico are proposing the use of stronger fasteners as part of an infrastructure upgrade on offshore drilling platforms. Damage to such facilities hammered oil output last summer, highlighting one of the energy world’s biggest weaknesses, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The shutdown of a massive gasoline conduit run by Colonial Pipeline Co. during the summer of 2005 exposed how vulnerable the U.S. energy network remains, according to the Journal.
Hurricane Katrina severed electricity to seven pumping stations along Colonial’s pipeline, crippling a major source of gasoline and jet-fuel for more than a dozen states. “An unprecedented scramble by industry and government officials averted a full-blown energy crisis in the wake of Katrina. Still, the Colonial pipeline’s shutdown brought the U.S. much closer to large-scale gasoline shortages than the public realizes, according to interviews with industry executives and government officials,” the Journal reports.
But vulnerabilities remain, worrying some industry experts. The industry keeps little extra inventory of products like gasoline, and the electrical grid powering the refineries and pipelines is as fragile as ever. Many upgrades won’t be made this year, as space to re-outfit offshore platforms remains scarce. �2006 FastenerNews.com