08-12-06 A salt dome in south-eastern Mississippi has been chosen for expansion of the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Energy Department announced. The site near Richton, Mississippi, will help the government eventually expand the size of the emergency oil stockpile to 1 bn barrels.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman identified the Richton site as the "preferred alternative" and said it will add to the SPR's geographic diversity.

The department currently has three SPR sites along the Gulf Coast: Big Hill in Texas and Bayou Choctaw in West Hackberry, in Louisiana. Capacity at those sites also will be expanded.
The SPR currently has about 700 mm barrels of oil. Congress has authorized an expansion to 1 bn barrels, although flow into the SPR has been suspended until at least next spring so as not to take oil away from commercial markets.

Separately, the DOE's inspector general issued a report praising the SPR's response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. It said the SPR's oil was used "with great effectiveness to address emergency energy needs in the crisis."
Overall, the government reserve provided 21 mm barrels of oil to refiners that had supplies cut off because of the storms, the report said.

The three SPR sites as well as its computer facilities were in the direct path of Hurricane Katrina. Both of its primary and alternate computer centres were for a time shut down by the storm.
The report recommended that the secondary computer centre, now 55 miles northeast of the primary site, be relocated farther away to provide additional safeguards in case of a severe storm.