Rita

My sister is back in Houston after taking the Red Eye from Portland last night. She plans to grab some papers and pictures and head north to her daughters in the Dallas area. The Houston area refineries were shuting down.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil companies on Wednesday began shutting refineries and finishing the evacuation of workers from oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as powerful Hurricane Rita approached.

About 14 percent of U.S. oil refining capacity by Wednesday night was shut as a precaution before Hurricane Rita strikes land and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

This practically ensures a rise in the price of a gallon of gasoline already pushed near record highs after Katrina knocked out refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Valero Corp. (NYSE:VLO - news), the nation's largest refiner, said it began shutting on Wednesday its 243,000 barrel per day Texas City refinery and its 135,000 bpd Houston refinery, and was operating its 340,000-bpd Corpus Christi plant on a skeleton crew.

Bill Greehey, Valero's chairman, characterized Rita as a "national disaster" that could send gasoline prices much higher.

Over at The Oil Drum they explain that Katrina and Rita are all about Global Warming.

I think we can stop all the pussyfooting in the press about how no individual storm can be attributed to global warming. Ok, we can't attribute Katrina to global warming. Ok, we can't attribute Rita to global warming. But I think there's a pretty decent argument to be made that two category five hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, back-to-back, inside a month, is not something that would have happened if global warming had not doubled the incidence of category 4 and 5 storms.

Given that global warming appears to be causing probably irreversible runaway changes like melting the permafrost, I think the only question now is how long it is before we need to add a Category 6 to the scale.