The Texas Automated Buoy System

摘要

The state of Texas has 367 miles of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico and a continental shelf supporting large reserves of oil and gas. As of June 2008, there were over 3800 active oil platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico with a large percentage of those working in Texas waters. Texas has 25 oil refineries and a refining capacity of 4.8 million barrels per day giving it the largest refining capacity in the US. Some of the oil reaches the refineries through hundreds of miles of submerged pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico and some is delivered by tanker. In 2007 tankers transported over 2.1 billion barrels of imported oil through the Gulf of Mexico and about 20% of that was lightered to smaller tankers for delivery to Texas ports.