From Oil Spill to Economic Kill – Whats It Going to Cost Us?
Take a good, long sip of that morning coffee. Thanks to the recent oil spill, your cup of joe might get a lot more expensive. What is shaping up to potentially be the worst U.S. oil spill in history isn’t just hurting the environment, it’s also choking the nation’s commerce and industry. University of Rhode Island professor Douglas Hales studies supply chains and their management. He says we could be headed for a “perfect storm” of economic mayhem that could lead to big price hikes down the road for commodities like grain, oil and coffee. “If the slick reaches mouth of the Mississippi, the Coast Guard will close all of the traffic into the river,” Hales told Discovery News. “That will cost $1 billion a day in commerce going through there, and that’s a conservative estimate.” The flooding that drowned parts of interstates 95 and 24 through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi didn’t help either, plugging normal supply channels to the Midwest, Hales said. Goods could potentially be offlo
