After hurricane Ivan hit vulnerable crude storage supply areas around the Gulf of Mexico, experts called Robert Bea, a former engineer with French oil company Total SA, to provide prediction information concerning “submarine avalanches.”

The term refers to mudslide damage to crude oil supplies that are stored under water. Bea believed hurricane damage posed a major threat to the Gulf supplies with the engine of destruction known as the hurricane “Ivan the Terrible.”

It turned out that Ivan had in fact triggered many mudslides that crippled production in a Gulf region that satisfies about one-fourth of the United States’ thirst for oil.

“Now the industry faces a titanic task: finding and repairing pipelines that have been broken, buried and slung about like pick-up sticks across the sea floor,” The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 27. “Until they are fixed, billion-dollar floating platforms will be idled and unable to get oil to land.”

Ivan “removed” more than 25.1 million barrels of oil from world markets – and continues to hold back more than 400,000 barrels a day. That is 25 percent of the Gulf’s normal daily production of 1.7 million barrels a day. Meanwhile, it could be six months before all the production can be restored, The Journal reported.