well today hofmeister joins us now from the university of dayton school of law in cincinnati thank youfor speaking to us on the news hour so these will obviously much anticipated hearings what did you make of robert list of formants before congress today well he definitely looked like you supposedly in the 1st hearing that he didn't want to be there and he held very closely to the script and he gave very short cursory answers you know basically yes or no in it many times he referred back to his report he seemed to loosen up a little bit more during the 2nd hearing before the intelligence committee. essentially much of what we heard was confirmation of his report just a couple of months ago and he said from the beginning that that was going to be his testimony he wasn't going to go really beyond the boundaries of that report but one of the some surprising moments in your view. i think so 1st i would say that it was very interesting to hear about the fact that yes the president could be prosecuted once he left office for obstruction of justice or report election. monies received or used

former oil president of shell oil john hofmeister is here in new york. talk about the oil side. then in a moment we'll get a report from new orleans. good to see you, john. >> good to see you. connell: this is always the case anytime we talk about a storm, you will hear as this one from casey stegall in a moment is scary because the water levels are already so high. maybe this could do a little more damage than a storm of this strength ordinarily might do. what about the from the oil industry perspective? >> there are two sides. one is the offshore. the crews have been evacuated. most companies have meteorologist on staff who keeps them well advised what happens from the weather front. getting people safely off the platforms, securing the platforms, so they can be shut down in a proper way, so they can be restarted in a proper way. everything is done in an order derly fashion. people are gone. everything is taken care of. what we don't know where the onshore facilities are. that can affect flooding and pipelines. this is refinery rich area, the southern

joining us right now is the former president of shell oil, john hofmeister.ost recent provocations from iran and their impact on oil? >> i think what we're looking at is international piracy and as we know from somalia, there's very little penalty for piracy and so i think if we had 10 or 12 captured super tankers lined up in an iranian port it would be dramatic. one or two, every once in a while, i think it's just playing havoc with the region and just keeping the water stirred. the big cutoff point, though, maria, as i see it, is if physical harm comes to whether it's iranian revolutionary guard or whether it's sailors on the ships or whether it's american sailors, if physical harm comes to the region, then i think you'll see a gigantic spike in the price. >> just to elaborate on we've got all these fuel stockpiles and investors are focused on that. what is going to change their mind about that? when we see blips in the market, different reports out of the strait, that doesn't really seem to have any long-term effect on investors' viewpoints. >> it really d