In Ike’s wake. Environmental damage and a nervous oil industry.

The devastation of Galveston and the nearby Bolivar Peninsula by Hurricane Ike was well publicized. As was the extended power outage for the Houston area’s more than one million people (about 10,000 households are still without power).

What is less well known is the environmental damage that the storm inflicted. According to a federal report released by the Minerals Management Service last week, Hurricane Ike was truly devastating.

Among the statistics:

• 448 releases of oil, gasoline, or other petrochemical pollutants
• 500,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico
• 3,000 pollution reports
• 1,500 sites requiring environment remediation or clean up
• 54 oil platforms (out of a total of 3,800 in the Gulf) destroyed
• 32 more oil platforms badly damaged

The 54 destroyed platforms produced a total of 13,300 barrels of oil per day and 90 million cu. ft. of natural gas per day.

The biggest single spill (about half the total crude oil spillage) occurred at a storage facility operated by St. Mary Land & Exploration Company on Goat Island, Texas, in a desolated area north of Bolivar Peninsula. The storm surge flooded the plant, breaking the pipes connecting its eight storage tanks.

There was only one confirmed report of an oil spill at an offshore platform, a leak of 8,400 gallons. However, such was the scope of Ike’s wind field that officials could find no trace of the spilled oil because it was completely dissipated by the strong winds and ocean currents.

Precautionary shutdowns of Gulf refineries and power outages affecting the Colonial Pipeline caused gasoline shortages across the Southeast for weeks.

Overall, industry experts are breathing a sigh of relief for having dodged what could have been a much larger disaster. The region’s heavy industry (including oil refineries) generally have seawalls, dikes, bulkheads, and other barriers that meet the 15ft high guidelines established by the US Army Corp of Engineers in the 1960s. Ike’s storm surge was no higher than 12 feet in most places directly affected by the storm’s wrath, not the 20ft that many feared, and the barriers — for the most part — held.

But with major hurricanes Ike, Gustav, Rita, and Katrina all slamming onshore in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico coastline in the last three years, industry analysts have been reminded that most of the country’s offshore rigs, not to mention its major cluster of refineries, are all exposed to these dangerous and destructive Gulf storms. And the weather pattern is pointing to a cycle of more intense Atlantic Basin hurricanes in the coming years. Not comforting.

A postscript. Hurricane Katrina (2005) is ranked as one of the worst environmental disasters (and the most expensive hurricane) in US history, with about 9 million gallons of oil spilled.