Katrina, Bad Economic News as Well

As New Orleans is about to be ripped apart (this Katrina is the real deal), some numbers:

Oil Refineries (each black dot is either a refinery or an associated business):



Louisiana is home to 16 oil refineries (11% of US capacity). Louisiana has the refining capability of 2.7m barrels per day (16% of US capacity). Some of the bigger refineries are in the path.

Mississippi and Alabama are capable of a combined 500k barrels per day.

Port of New Orleans:

• More than 6,000 ocean vessels annually move through New Orleans on the Mississippi River.
• Maritime activity within the Port of New Orleans is responsible for more than 107,000 jobs, $2 billion in earnings, $13 billion in spending and $231 million in taxes statewide.
• The Port of New Orleans is a diverse general cargo port, handling containerized cargo such as apparel, food products, and consumer merchandise. The Port’s general cargo volume has averaged 11.2 million tons (1998-2002), with a record 14.1 million tons in 1998.

Estimates of economic damage are in the U$D 15bn to 30bn range.

Via Instapundit, oil at U$D 70 per barrel already. As the short-term economic hopes of the EU are currently relying on the value of the Euro and "lower" oil prices, not good news.

Update: Instapundit readers, welcome! Feel free to browse the blog. Also, pre-landfall the blamestorming has begun. Surprise, surprise it is all President Bush's fault.

Update II: I'll take advantage of the Instapundit crowd to ask a question asked last week on this blog. For any enviros who embrace the "computer models" predicting flawlessly 50 to 60 years into the future in regards to global warming, why did "computer models" initially predict Katrina's path as follows: