U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday it could take months to resume normal shipments of Alaskan oil, but he stressed there are adequate supplies to compensate for the loss to west coast refineries. “My sense is we're in pretty reasonable shape,” Bodman told reporters. He said there are relatively high inventories of crude oil in the system and that oil can be diverted from other producers, including Saudi Arabia and Mexico, to meet U.S. refinery needs. “We believe we know how to handle this type of situation,” Bodman said. “There appears to be adequate supplies.” He also reiterated that the Bush administration would be willing to use supplies from the national petroleum reserve if requested by west coast refiners. About 400,000 barrels per day of Alaskan crude oil is expected to be lost because of a shutdown of a BP oil field following corrosion problems in pipelines. That amount is half the output from Alaska's North Slope. Bodman said that officials at BP Alaska told him it would “take probably months to fix” the pipeline problem, “so we are going to have to deal with the issue at hand.”
