Roads, Not Pipelines, May Be Biggest Threat to Growth in Oil Hotspot
- Road jams now common as truck traffic surges on key highways
- Everything used at wellhead comes by road, Shell GM says
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For an oilman who’s worked on the Gulf Coast, near the Russian Arctic and in Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s headquarters in The Hague, being stuck in traffic on a dusty West Texas highway is not the stuff of dreams.
The GMC Yukon rented by Amir Gerges, general manager of Shell’s operations in the Permian Basin, has crawled just four miles in the past hour. “That’s probably a truck that rolled over that’s causing this,” Gerges said, speaking from weary experience.