Back in June, cable TV channel
FX (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) televised a made-for-TV movie called
"Oil Storm". The movie was hardly noticed at the time. But strangely, in the movie a Category 6 hurricane named Julia slams New Orleans and surrounding areas on Labor Day weekend of 2005 -- just a few days later than what happened in real life with Hurricane Katrina.
Similar to Hurricane Katrina, the fictional hurricane in "Oil Storm" causes heavy damage to oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico and forces the closing of the huge Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the nation's largest terminal for imported oil.
No, I'm not making this up.
After the fictional Hurrican Julia hits New Orleans, oil climbs above $70 a barrel in frenzied trading. Quite eerily, Katrina forced crude prices above $70 only hours after the hurricane came ashore.
In the movie, Julia left 1,476 Louisiana residents dead. As of today, Katrina's death toll tops 1,060 (and rising).
In the movie, a series of catastrophic oil-related events occur in the months after Julia's onslaught. Tonight, Hurricane Rita is slamming into the coastal oil ports of Texas. In the movie, crude prices eventually balloon to as high as $150 a barrel, gasoline tops $8 a gallon, and the U.S. economy is left reeling.
Here is a synopsis of the movie taken from FX's website:
"Oil Storm examines what happens when a category 6 hurricane in the gulf of mexico slams into Louisiana, crushing the city of New Orleans and crippling the vital pipeline for refined oil that is Port Fourchon. It examines the ripple effect of that event and the ensuing cascade of disasters associated with it, through the eyes of public officials, a family in Texas who owns a gas station, an EMS worker in Boston who has to deal with a brutal winter, and a ranching family in South Dakota who have their subsidy's completely taken away and question whether we need oil or food to survive.
As the country reels from the loss of life and energy reserves associated with hurricane's fury, the price of crude oil skyrockets and the United States government sets forth to take immediate action. It puts in motion efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Port Fourchon (8 months minimum) and the sagging and disabled deep sea rigs in the gulf of Mexico (of equal length). It re-routes activity normally associated with the Port Fourchon shipping lanes to the port of Houston and compels Houston to work 24/7 in order to get the crude to our refineries and out to the public."
Go
here to view a clip from the movie "Oil Storm".
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