Saturday, November 3, 2012

Holtsville to the rescue


After sleeping in, and having a leisurely breakfast, I decide to stretch, warm up and go for a run.  Even if the NYC marathon is postponed (or is it cancelled ?), I personally need to get back to running after my hammy injury has sidelined me for the better part of October.

About half way down my street, my cell phone is ringing...I stop and see a long strange number, typically a telltale sign that Bangalore India is calling.  Sure enough, trouble in paradise.  One of our data centers in the northeast, this one in Nutley NJ which has been running on generator power since Sandy came through.  The next couple of hours are spent recovering services.

Kyle comes home from practice, and after watching some soccer, he says that there was a long line for gas at our gas station on Broadway Ave.  Sue and I look at each other, each with about 1/2 a tank of gas and decide to not get on the nearly mile long line.

This day in history "At 12:05 A.M. on this day in 1930, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel between the United States and Canada is officially opened to car traffic. As Windsor Mayor Frederick Jackson had bragged at the tunnel's elaborate dedication ceremony two days before, the structure--the only international subaqueous tunnel in the world--made it possible to "pass from one great country to the other in the short space of three minutes." (For his part, Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy cheered that the project signified "a new appreciation of our desire to preserve peace, friendship, and the brotherhood of man.") The first passenger car through the tunnel was a 1929 Studebaker."

The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is still filled with an estimated 86 million gallons of water, and from what I read, there is fuel mixed in with the water.  To give you an idea of how much water this is, the tunnel is well over a mile long.  Actually it is a pair of tunnels.  . It consists of twin tubes, carrying four traffic lanes, and at 9,117 feet (2,779 m) is the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America.

An engineering marvel for sure, and it will take a modern engineering marvel to drain it and get it back into service.

Like I said earlier, the gas station near us got a fuel delivery.  Guess how fuel gets to all the service stations ? By tanker truck of course.  But how many know about the route the gasoline travels to get from ports to the distribution depots ?  We have one about 5 miles away in Holtsville  ( basically the middle of Long Island ).

Northville gets it's distillates from tankers in Port Jefferson.  Fuel then travels via pipeline (small tunnels) to East Setauket.  From their it travel to the facility on Holtsville.  Finally, trucks of all sizes come to fill up with #2 heating oil, Diesel, and various grades of gasoline for local distribution.

Products are transported directly to the East Setauket Tank Farm by two 16" pipelines, then on to the Holtsville Terminal through one 12" pipeline.  Let's do some math.

East Setauket Tank Farm

Located 3 miles south of Pt. Jefferson, this tank farm has 9 internal floating roof tanks with a total capacity of 950,000 barrels(39,900,000 Gallons).

Holtsville Terminal

Located 9 miles south of the East Setauket Tank Farm, this facility has 12 floating roof tanks and 3 cone roof tanks. Storage capacity totals 380,000 barrels(15,960,000 Gallons).

We will take the values of 1 million vehicles in Suffolk County as a fairly accurate.  If each vehicle on average can take 15 gallons of fuel, then it would take 15,000,000 gallons to fill each vehicle once.

So, even if Holtsville was filled to the max with gasoline, there would only be supply enough for each car to fill up once.  But since it holds Diesel, #2 Heating oil, and Kerosene.  Without nearly daily deliveries to port, the fuel supply can easily be disrupted in only a couple of days.  Most folks I know fill up about once a week, but demand has also spiked due to the number of generators running on gasoline.

Some relief coming....

Northville Terminal at Port Jefferson opened yesterday with 2.4 million gallons of diesel on site. A barge arrived at midnight Saturday morning with 1 million gallons of gasoline. A barge from Hess Port Reading is expected to arrive today with 1 million gallons gasoline. Other scheduled deliveries include:
· November 4: 1.5 million gallons gasoline
· November 5: 1.5 million gallons gasoline
· November 6: 4 million gallons of gasoline and 5.3 million gallons of diesel

Photo of the day "Holtsville Fuel"


P.S. I ran 3.3 miles this afternoon.  A slow run, with a slight discomfort in the right hamstring.  If we all walk more and conserve fuel, we will be back on track soon.  

Gas Shortage - How to get 41 Miles Per Gallon - Conserve Fuel
Walk to the store and buy some beer !
A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of beer a year. That means
that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!


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