Steps will include using ultra violet disinfection, raising pumping capacity and creating more underground storage.

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Per Chilton Investment Company, the Saudis not only lack the reserves, but also the pumping capacity to increase production.

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The city's pumping capacity is back to pre-Katrina levels, Brenda Thornton, a spokeswoman for the city's Sewage and Water Board, said Wednesday.

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Furthermore, the industry can muster only about 1.5m barrels a day of spare pumping capacity a tiny fraction of the 84m-odd barrels the world consumes daily.

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DC the kingdom used to maintain spare pumping capacity of a few million barrels a day, enough to deal with an unexpected surge in demand or a sudden cut in supply.

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Hurricane Katrina roared into already tight oil markets, damaging much of America's oil-pumping and -refining capacity, and another hurricane, Rita, threatened to wreak more havoc along the Gulf coast this week.

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But Mr Steele-Perkins said SLP would give land to South West Water which he said will allow it to expand the capacity of its foul water pumping station.

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He added that sewerage upgrades carried out at pumping stations in 2001 were operating at peak capacity during the storm and that a stand-by pump had also been switched on.

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The Saudis have total production capacity of 14 million barrels a day, but are pumping less than 9 million a day.

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Also suppliers in the Opec group of producing nations are pumping at their highest rate in a quarter century, with not much in the way of spare capacity to make up any shortfalls.

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