What's exploding now?

It's really hard to keep up.  I still don't think they ever figured out what the January 25th "loud boom" was. Maybe they never will. 

We know where this one came from. 

GARYVILLE — A huge Louisiana refinery was rocked by an explosion and fire Monday. Marathon Petroleum Corp. said six workers suffered minor injuries.

Officials later gave the all-clear sign, but it was not immediately clear what caused the morning blast at the Marathon Petroleum Corp. plant in Garyville, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Six contract workers were injured, Marathon spokesperson Joe Gannon said in an emailed statement. He said three were treated at the plant and three were treated and released at a health care facility where they were taken as a precaution.

 

Not a moment too soon

 TP: EPA to start surprise inspections of industrial polluters, add air monitors in Louisiana 

Focusing on environmental justice in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans start unannounced inspections of industrial polluters, install more fenceline monitors at the plants and push state and local officials to step up their own enforcement.

“I asked my team to go further and faster than we’ve ever done before to elevate protection for people who have historically been left behind in underserved communities,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Tuesday. “Those who are suffering disproportionately under the weight of the pandemic, who are on the frontlines of climate change, who suffer more from pollution, have been waiting long enough. And they are counting on us to get this right.”

I hope they bring the explosion detectors too. That's something we need to look out for, especially.  

Westlake, LA (KPLC) - Officials with Westlake Chemical have confirmed that there was an explosion at the Westlake chemical south plant.

Officials said a tank of Ethylene Dichloride exploded.

The plant is located near Pete Manena Road and PPG Drive.

We are currently reaching out to officials for more information.

Y'all we could have ended the pandemic

 When you see (or maybe just hear) a shooting star, that is your moment. You have to seize it. 

Meteor?

Maybe. We're checking with NASA to see if anything was reported. The National Weather Service doesn't track meteors.

"Meteors aren't weather," according to Mike Efferson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Slidell.

Earlier this month, a loud boom was heard in part of Pennsylvania, and NASA said it was caused by a meteor exploding in the atmosphere, according to CNN.

NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office tracks meteors at its office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. 

They run a Facebook page called NASA Meteor Watch that tracks fireballs across the country. It had not been updated as of Wednesday morning. We've reached out for more information.

But I get the feeling too many of y'all might have just wished for a ham sandwich instead. 

Exploding pie

Ray Nagin, 2006: "This economic pie that is getting ready to explode before our eyes is going to be shared equally."

We never figured out how Nagin intended for us to share the pie after he had exploded it. But that doesn't mean we don't get to keep trying.  

Michael Hecht, CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc. (GNO) says it's already evident in New Orleans.  "Some of the empirical evidence that we have of this phenomenon is all the companies that are on-shoring back to Louisiana."   He says multinational companies are choosing our area over emerging markets, due to lower costs and a higher quality of life.

When large investors and multinational companies plan on where to spend money, emerging economies like China or Brazil are usually high on their radar.  But Whitney is recommending that they skip that, and invest instead in places like Louisiana.

"Lower costs, high quality of life, and lower risk is actually making it advantageous to invest domestically right here in Louisiana and New Orleans, than to go abroad.  So I think the on-shoring of what Meredith Whitney calls the smart money is evidence that this is a  real trend," says Hecht.

Whatever Hecht thinks he is on about with regard to "quality of life" and "risk" the real reason analysts like Whitney have their eyes on Louisiana is the oil and gas boom.

Barring an unanticipated setback, so-called “unconventional” oil and gas production is expected to continue to grow over the next two decades. Over that period, the industry is expected to make more than $5 trillion in new capital investment that will support more than 3.5 million jobs by 2035, according to the financial analysis firm IHS Global Insight.

That economic impact of such spending already is spreading, especially to companies that rely heavily on natural gas as a raw material or energy source and investing and hiring.

Steel makers, for example, benefit from both the lower cost of manufacturing and from strong demand for steel pipe used for oil and gas drilling. Companies in the steel rustbelt of Pennsylvania and Ohio are polishing up aging plants to replace coal with cheaper natural gas. Others are setting up shop closer to major gas distribution hubs like Louisiana, where steel giant Nucor is investing $750 million to fire up a new plant later this year.

There is so much investment happening in oil and gas production that you can see the shale gas camps in central Texas from freaking space. (H/T Mark Moseley) That's what's causing the pie to explode in Louisiana right now too.  Along with a few other things, of course.

A 30-inch natural gas line exploded before dawn Tuesday in southern Washington Parish, rocking the rural area and sending a fireball into the sky. No injuries or significant property damage have been reported from the blast, which occurred about 5:30 a.m. in the Enon area south of Franklinton.

Another one

Just yesterday as the Williams Chemical plant in Geismar was burning, I couldn't help but be a little surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.  The natural beauty of the South Louisiana tends to be what dominates our mental image of the place but, in truth, it is built over with petrochemical infrastructure. There are over a hundred facilities like the one that exploded in Geismar.  Stuff like this could be happening all the time.  But it doesn't.  Except when it does.

An explosion occurred at a fertilizer plant in Ascension Parish Friday evening, sending multiple people to the hospital. One person died in the blast, reports say.

The incident occurred the day after another explosion at the Williams Olefins chemical plant in Geismar injured 77 people and killed two.

Must be a special kind of burning

This is a neat trick.

At least twenty-five people sustained unspecified injuries, said Paige Hargrove, executive director of the Louisiana Emergency Response Network.

There are no confirmed fatalities and no official count on the injured, said Jared Sadifer, a state police spokesman. A two-mile radius has been set up around the area but there is no residential impact, Sadifer said. A chemical is being burned off, but there is no immediate threat to the public and it is not being released into the air, he said.

Credit where it's due

It's been pointed out to me that Ray Nagin was right all along.  There really were exploding pies in New Orleans after all.

Welp, it blowed up good

Associated Press video.  They got out of bed this morning so we didn't have to.

Danger: Exploding Bananas

Bananas Foster explodes, injuring four

Self-referential blog moment: This is very different from Exploding Pie.