4A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEATHER
NEWS
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. 2005
Round two for Gulf coast
Mark M. Hancock/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Motorists wait for fuel at a gas station in Port Arthur, Texas, yesterday. Residents of the southeast Texas region are stocking up on supplies in anticipation of Hurricane Rita, which is expected to hit somewhere in the area Saturday.
BY NEDRA PICKLER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — President Bush kept a worried watch Tuesday on "what we pray is not a devastating storm" — Hurricane Rita — as he flew over miles of flattened homes and mud-caked neighborhoods hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Bush received a briefing about Rita aboard the USS Iwo Jima, which is docked near downtown New Orleans, as the hurricane lashed the Florida Keys and caused new anxiety among Katrina victims in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
The officials said Rita was projected to strengthen to a Category 3 hurricane that would hit the upper to middle part of the Texas coast by the weekend and could create tropical storm conditions — or, much less likely, hurricane-force winds — in southeastern Louisiana.
In a ship mess hall, the president held a videoconference with three federal officials: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Charroft, the National Hurricane Center's deputy director, Ed Rappaport, and a Federal Emergency Management Agency official.
"we're watching very closely, of course, its track," Bush said later at a Folgers coffee plant in Louisiana that recently restarted operations. "All up and down the coastline people are now preparing for what is anticipated to be yet another significant storm."
Eager to show hands-on leadership after being criticized for a slow response to Katrina, Bush signed an emergency declaration for Florida, spoke with Texas Gov. Rick Perry about planning for the storm's landfall, and said military outfits are being removed from New Orleans to be out of
Rita's path and ready to help with recovery.
The White House said Bush had named Frances Fragos Townsend, his in-house homeland security adviser, to lead an administration investigation of "what went wrong and what went right" in the sluggish federal response to Katrina. The appointment of Townsend, a former federal prosecutor with a reputation as a tough adversary, is unlikely to satisfy Democrats on Capitol Hill who are demanding a fully independent investigation.
Bush said he was pleased that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suspended his plan to allow as many as a third of the city's residents to return. He said positive steps are being taken.
"What you're beginning to see is a revitalized economy," Bush said, standing before 110 trailers set up for Folgers employees who lost their homes. "Progress is being made."
Bush began the day in Gulf
"There is no doubt in my mind that out of the rubble and out of the huge heaps of timber that used to be homes, a better Mississippi will emerge." Bush told the local government and business leaders gathered in an air-conditioned tent set up in a hurricane-damaged outlet shopping center.
port, Miss., where he dropped in on the first meeting of Gov. Haley Barbour's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, applauding their "can-do spirit" and pledging to help clean up the devastated Gulf Coast. He flew along the coast over mile after mile of destroyed homes.
Jim Barksdale, chairman of Barbour's commission, told the president and other attendees that they only have themselves to blame if reconstruction isn't successful. "You folks are like the pig at a ham and egg breakfast," he said. "You are committed."
The president told them he had heard their complaints about bureaucratic hurdles for trash removal, saying he was personally making calls to cut through red tape and people in the area will soon see results.
"There was a level of frustration, as there should have been," he said. "We'll get the debris removed."
Barbour told Bush that local officials need the federal government's help to rebuild the area's infrastructure and make Mississippi's hurricane zone "the most attractive place in America for private investment."
"I'm confident that we'll get the resources because y'all have been so generous and good to us. But we want you to know that we're going to try to help you know what to give us," Barbour said to laughter.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan acknowledged that some of Mississippi's more rural areas still are waiting for federal help that has been focused in New Orleans and other larger population centers.
ECONOMY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oil prices fluctuate amid Rita threat
NEW YORK — Oil prices dropped more than $1 a barrel yesterday but held on to most of Monday's sharp advance, as Hurricane Rita headed toward the Gulf Coast.
Projections made early yesterday that Rita would miss the Houston area refineries triggered a drop of more than $2 a barrel in oil prices. But prices recovered much of those losses as Rita strengthened to a category 2 hurricane, with winds of 100 mph.
100 hp. "The complex is still demanding at least some storm premium," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates. "There is still some concern out there. Otherwise, we'd have given up more than half of yesterday's gain."
At the New York Mercantile Exchange, the October crude-oil contract ended $1.16 lower at $66.23 after dropping as low as $64.80 a barrel.
Petroleum products, which advanced more than 10 percent Monday, posted bigger losses but ended well off their intraday lows by the close.
October gasoline, up nearly 25 cents at one point Monday, drooped as low as $1.9150 a gallon before closing at $1.9766 a gallon, down 6.71 cents on the day.
October heating oil ended at $2.0113, down 2.71 cents, after hitting an intraday low of $1.9250.
Forecasts Monday that Rita would target Houston sent oil prices soaring a record $4.39, above $67 a barrel. Traders worried about the loss of refining capacity at a time when refiners are struggling to recover from the devastation brought about by Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago.
"Yesterday was pure panic," Fitzpatrick said.
But while those worries have eased a bit, forecasters and analysts warned that Rita's track and strength could change as it moves westward.
"It's going to be a very emotional market in the next several days," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. "It's still a little too early, but you have to take the threat seriously. We don't know if it's gong to do any damage."
The pullback in prices came as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting in Vienna, decided to leave its official output target unchanged but to make some 2 million barrels a day in unused production capacity available as of Oct.1.
Officials, expressing concern about the latest price spike, said the move to make all of the cartel's extra capacity available was meant to reassure the consumers on supplies.
October natural gas fell 1.71 cents to close at $12.492 per million British thermal units.
December gold settled at $470 an ounce, down 40 cents, on the Nv mex.
December silver settled at $7.375 an ounce, down 2.3 cents.
The September copper contract settled up 1 cent at $1.7495 per pound. The most-active December copper contract rose 1.15 cents to $1.6660.
Arabica coffee futures bounced off 10-month lows on the New York Board of Trade.
Buyers were influenced by talk that exchange-licensed beans in New Orleans, being examined by Nybot inspectors this week, will be decertified because of damage from Hurricane Katrina.
The September contract settled 7.30 cents higher at 91.75 cents a pound, and December closed up 6.05 cents at 92.50 cents.
WE