Mover Mike

Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial damage assessments show.

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aid Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. “The path Katrina took was through the mature areas of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production] platforms. Rita came to the west where there is a lot of [exploratory] rig activity.”

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Initial reports from companies are ominous. Global Santa Fe reported it could not find two of its rigs. Rowan Companies reported four rigs damaged, with two having moved, one losing its “legs” and the fourth presumed sunk. Noble has four rigs adrift, with two run aground one into a ChevronTexaco platform.

Ron Franscell tells of the joy of delivering 100 newspapers to the people of Beaumont, Texas. One more sign that things will be returning to normal.

Before dawn, I awoke like a kid on Christmas morning. For 10 days, our newspaper had been a well-organized but intangible collection of pixels orbiting somewhere in cyberspace. You could summon it to your screen, an electronic shadow that served its purpose of delivering a message in real-time, but not really yours. Today, we printed a real, honest-to-God paper-paper again. And today, I wanted to load up my car with as many as I could, and hand them directly to readers wherever I could find them.