The storm may be moving west of the oil spill in the Gulf, but
the momentary panic revealed just how fragile a situation the
ongoing recovery remains. At the beginning of the weekend,
before tropical storm Alex made landfall over Belize,
forecasters were panicking about the storm’s possible turn
towards Louisiana. Now this morning, the plan seems to be for
Alex to escalate into a hurricane late in the day Tuesday, and
for it to slam into the Mexico-Southern Texas coast later in the
week. This is far, far west of the oil spill area, and while
storms can change course rapidly and unpredictably, it would
appear that the oil operations will not be affected. Still, the
Alex scare revealed the tenuous nature of the ongoing efforts
out at sea. Any weather system that generates winds in excess of
46 miles per hour could force all operations to grind to a halt
– meaning there would be no efforts made to contain the gushing
oil, or to drill the relief wells. Five days prior to a storm,
all equipment and personnel would