GICC has received the following postings on refinery concerns for the archives:

Fair Use/Education Research Use

Edited thread: "........Two more refinery snafus surface Wednesday."

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002MH6

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

How many more are going unreported?

Crude oil feed line down forcing run cuts

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 19, 2000

__________________________________________________________________________

Answers: (skip)

Factfinder:

.....Regarding Oil and Y2K... as a corporate big oil shill, the last thing you'll want to do is admit to a Y2k problem right now as this will open you up to all sorts of problems, not the least of which is severe pressure on your stocks, not to mention lawsuits, and most likely an admission will provoke an early and enforced retirement. Most corp bigwigs will move heaven and earth to avoid the retirement and lawsuite threat alone. SO there is real disincentive to come clean on Y2K. There is also the damage to credibility to consider as well.

All that said... one other aspect. For more than 40 years as someone who grew up in the oil business, I can say that the level of problems refineries are experiencing this January (unrelated to weather) is UNPRECEDENTED. There are no statistics that I know of though that can verify this. Downstreamer though, acknowledges this too and he's no doomer. Frankly, neither am I doomer. I've been sandwiched in that category because I defended the doomers positions pre and post rollover as not to be dismissed short of TEOTWAWKI) I started out as a "3-5" prior to my finding this forum last year and I moved up to a "7" (if we had a massive 1/1/00 blowout of infrastructure)...but I didn't completely rule out an 8 or 9 as impossible.

Now, whether one dismisses what my relatives and friends in the oil biz are saying, one should be able to objectively look at the mounting data and realize that something isn't right here, especially keeping in mind the extra incentives for corporations not to reveal serious Y2K problems. Sure admit to the little non-problematic incidents but stonewall and obfuscate anything of significance until it becomes unmanageable.

Factfinder...I've got family laying their very lives on the line telling me that things are more dangerous now than they ever have been. Systems have become unstable. Yes embeddeds are a problem and they are very concerned. Frankly, they'd love to come forward, but the moment they do, they're history. They'll be blacklisted and they know they'll never work again if they spill their guts. So they're NOT gonna talk to you, period. Oh, and not everyone in a refinery knows they've got embeddeds problems. It's just on a need to know basis. However, whispers are known to get around. Frankly, son, you don't have a clue and your foolish enough to stand out in front of this train thinking your some sort of Superman who can write this situation off as nonsense. Well it is NOT nonsense.

Frankly, we're a little further ahead of the curve than I'd expected. In the last two days, I'm being told that incident rates are rising. Systems that were thought to be remediated and fine are suddenly NOT.

Remediation continues but one fellow told me that it is very similar to trying to track down a "computer-chip sensor" on some of those first computerized cars in the late 1980s...in which you have to go thru a sequence to track down a problem. You start with sensor A and find it is bad. You can't keep checking the other sensors to see how bad they are until you first replace sensor A that is bad. So you replace A. Then sensor B is fine, but C is not. You replace C only to find out that the new A has now also blown out again before you can test for sensor D. So now you have to go back and re-replace again sensor A. From what I understand there have been some incidents of this occuring that is driving some folks crazy. So they've been chasing their tails so to speak. I don't know how prevalent this is across the industry, but my one source who is head Y2k remediator for a major refinery indicates that this has been his experience so far and is hearing that his story is not unique, but he's not heard any details of elsewhere. Right now, its just a nuisance that makes the processes stop and start. In sharing this with others, I'm told it seems to match up to their experiences elsewhere. We are seeing folks getting hurt, some not reported to the media at all. Unless it makes for spectacular video for the 10 o'clock news nobody in the media is going to pay attention to it. After all, Y2k was a non-event Clinton said so.

Frankly Factfinder, people like you disgust me. You have certainly demonstrated to me in the past that your actions do not measure up to the character you wish to be applied to you on the basis of your name.

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), January 20, 2000.

-- GICC Sysop (y2kgicc@yahoo.com), July 18, 2000