The region cuts local oil storage at the peril of all who live here

In 1972, while a graduate student at the American University in Washington, D.C., I produced a paper on intermodal transportation and their impact on New England’s economy. Part of that paper involved a study of oil storage facilities around Narragansett Bay.

At the time, there were, excluding the military installations, 22 million barrels of storage capacity around the Bay. If Ms. Julie A. Gill’s figures are correct (“Storage facilities provide irreplaceable energy source,” Oct. 8), only 10 percent of that capacity remains.

The Oct. 6 issue of The Wall Street Journal has an article which provides some excellent insight as to why that capacity has dwindled. Once the majors were taken out of the equation – Mobil, Gulf, Shell, Texaco, etc. – in terms of managing oil production from the well to the consumer, it was inevitable that the strategic reserve would shrink.

This country, this area and region, have placed us in an untenable position in the event of a world crisis, by paying more attention to special interests and environmentalists than to the reality of surviving a crisis, should that ever occur.

- Advertisement -

Why, in this country, must we learn too little, always, when it is too late?

Bernard P. Giroux of Fall River

Giroux & Co.

No posts to display