Oct. 1, 2008 — In the 19 days since Hurricane Ike struck the Gulf Coast, oil producing facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and coastal refineries have been moving back towards normal production rates, and prices throughout the distribution chain have moderated. Due to port closures and pipeline outages, crude oil flows had been curtailed over the last few weeks; and more time is still required to get flows moving again at normal rates throughout the entire system. But, as of yesterday, only 742,000 barrels per day of the original crude oil outage of 1.3 million barrels per day remained shut in. Moreover, a relatively small amount of refinery capacity was still completely shut down. Although the restoration of electrical power to refineries has progressed and most of the affected refineries are back online, these refineries have yet to reach normal production levels. more