Good day to the Citzens of this world
and to all my bo ri cua
With Puerto Rico’s electric grid in shambles after Hurricane Maria,
gasoline and diesel have become liquid gold in this U.S. territory.
The island’s 3.4 million residents urgently need it to fuel their automobile tanks and power generators to light their homes and businesses.
But like so many other necessities here, the distribution of fuel is reliant on a transportation network crippled by the storm.
Puerto Rico gets most of its fuel sent by ship from the United States. But restrictions at its ports,
with one closed and another operating only during the daytime, has limited shipping.
Meanwhile, tanker trucks have had difficulty navigating the island’s blocked and damaged roads.
U.S. Air Force Colonel Michael Valle, on hand for relief efforts in San Juan,
said he was most concerned about “the level of desperation” that could arise if fuel distribution did not return to normal within a couple of weeks.
Complicating those efforts is the shutdown of Puerto Rico’s primary fuel storage point.
Known as the Yabucoa terminal, the facility is located in the hard-hit southeastern part of the island, where Maria first made landfall.
The terminal was closed prior to the storm and has yet to re-open, according to Buckeye Partners,
the terminal operator, which said a full assessment of the facility is under way.
Yabucoa can store up to 4.6 million barrels of crude oil, gasoline or products like fuel oil and diesel needed for power generation. That storage point is used for distribution for other islands in the Caribbean as well.
Adding to Puerto Rico’s difficulties is the sudden surge in demand for diesel to power generators.
A shipping broker who was not authorized to speak to the press said concerns about diesel supplies were growing.
The few gas stations operating in Puerto Rico have attracted miles-long lines of cars,
where drivers wait seven hours or longer in queues that snake through neighborhoods, up highway exit ramps and onto freeways.
“People here are going crazy trying to find gas,” said motorist Peter Matos, 60, of Yauco, a city in the southwestern part of the island. “I have about half a tank left.”
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello told mayors he will work with U.S. authorities to improve fuel distribution, said Israel Morales, a communications advisor to municipalities in Puerto Rico.
The day after the storm hit, Rossello advised mayors that there was sufficient fuel, Morales said,
but the problem was distribution as it was stored at the ports and terminals on the island, and could not be easily routed to areas that needed it.
The island’s residents use about 155,000 barrels of fuel a day, less than 1 percent of the 19 million barrels consumed daily in the United States. Puerto Rico has no operating refineries, as the last one idled in 2009.
The good news is that the Port of San Juan, the island’s primary port, has experienced minimal damage, according to Jose Luis Ayala, chairman and director general of Puerto Rico’s division of shipping company Crowley Maritime Corp.
He said ships carrying fuel were moved south out of Hurricane Maria’s path, and were able to get to the Port of San Juan once the terminal re-opened on Friday.
“Even though there was some damage, it was functional,” he said. According to Thomson Reuters shipping data, three vessels were unloading fuel at San Juan as of Tuesday, while three others were waiting for opportunities to unload as well.
Large convoys of fuel trucks were seen traveling the highways on Monday, the first time in several days those vehicles were out in force. Hospitals and fuel stations are taking deliveries of diesel via trucks escorted by armed guards.
In the aftermath of hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is dealing with horrifying devastation. One thing that could help with a recovery that’s bound to be long and
difficult is opening the ports to emergency-supply-laden foreign boats. Plenty such boats come and go to the US that could be deployed for that task, but there’s a catch: They’re not allowed to unload their wares on the island.
Under a long-standing US law, the 1920 Merchant Marine Act, all the transportation of goods between US ports has to be done by US vessels exclusively.
This means that ships from other countries can’t transport supplies between US harbors. That limits the number of available boats, even in unusual, extreme situations such as what Puerto Rico is experiencing now.
In the wake of past natural disasters, the US has temporarily lifted the rule,
known as the Jones Act after its sponsor, senator Wesley Jones.
The Department of Homeland Security did that earlier this month in response to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hammered the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts.
But the federal agency has kept the Jones Act in place after Maria hit Puerto Rico, despite pleas by several Puerto Rican members of Congress.
A group of lawmakers is asking Homeland Security, the agency that oversees the rule, to waive it for a year.
“Temporarily loosening these requirements—for the express purpose of disaster recovery—will allow Puerto Rico to have more access to the oil needed for its power plants, food, medicines, clothing, and building supplies,” they wrote in a letter to Homeland Security acting secretary Elaine Duke.
The agency says the situation in Puerto Rico after Maria is different than that of regions on the mainland after Harvey and Irma, since those hurricanes put some high-capacity fuel pipelines out of commission.
Boats were therefore needed to move those supplies, it said.
The agency’s assessment is that there are sufficient boats to serve Puerto Rico.
“The limitation is going to be port capacity to offload and transfer cargo, not vessel availability,” it said in a statement.
Indeed,
some gridlock has already emerged in Puerto Rico: Containers are piling up at ports as goods arrive faster than trucks can haul them away, according to local reports. But longer term,
increasing the supply of delivery boats would help Puerto Rico, which was already in dire straits before the arrival of Maria.
The island has been stuck in a downward economic spiral for years. Its weakened economy is overly dependent on imports;
for example, they account for more than 80% of its food supplies. Those and other goods are mostly delivered by just three US transportation companies.
The result, according to a government-commissioned report by former International Monetary Fund economists: Puerto Rico pays twice as much for imports from the US as neighboring US Virgin Island, which is exempted from the Jones Act.
The Homeland Security Department says under law, it can only waive the Jones Act for purposes of national security, and that the potential cost savings of lifting the law “is not material to our decision-making.”
Under the Act, for a ship to be allowed cabotage, or transportation of goods and people between two harbors in the same country, it has to satisfy all three of these conditions:
be US built, US owned, and US-flag-carrying (which means the ship is registered as American). The law’s original intent was to fortify the US ship building industry after World War I. Nearly 100 years later, that goal is no longer realistic.
Only five large shipyards survive in the country, and the number of American-built vessels has shrunk dramatically: between 2006 and 2011, the US-built, owned, and operated fleet shrank 17%, according to a study by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
That means there’s only so many boats that meet all three conditions available to deliver goods in Puerto Rico.
Some locals have long argued for the permanent suspension of the Jones Act, saying it’s crippling Puerto Rico’s economy. The fact that the US is refusing to lift it even temporarily in the midst of a major emergency does not bode well for their cause.
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