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Ida Hit Crushes Crude Output In Gulf Of Mexico, Ranked Worst In 16 Years

September 9, 2021

Ida Hit Crushes Crude Output In Gulf Of Mexico, Ranked Worst In 16 Years

Hurricane Ida’s disruption to the U.S. offshore energy production in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst in 16 years. It has already stressed domestic and global supply chains, further testing the Federal Reserve’s “transitory” inflation narrative.

Gulf Coast hurricanes usually cause minor disruptions in offshore oil and gas production, but this time around, output from the region has been significantly reduced due to Ida’s 150 mph winds that damaged platforms and onshore support facilities.

What this will mean is a long recovery for offshore energy production to return. Reuters notes 79% of the region’s offshore oil production remains offline.

Since the first oil platforms were evacuated ahead of Ida, there’s been a loss of 17.5 million barrels of oil. Some energy analysts are expecting U.S. production could drop by 30 million barrels this year due to the sluggish return.

“After Katrina, which made landfall 16 years ago on the same day as Ida did this year, it was well into the following year before oil production resumed its normal level,” Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch told clients. “That said, Katrina was followed shortly after by another devastating hurricane, namely Rita.”

There is currently a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that has a 50% chance of developing over the next two days.

The outage has left a noticeable imprint on NYMEX West Texas Intermediate futures hovering around the $70 handle, up more than 11% since weather models first forecasted Ida would make landfall around the Louisiana region.

There’s no clear timeline when full production will return. “There could be volumes that are offline for a considerable amount of time,” said Facts Global Energy (FGE) consultant Krista Kuhl. “It’s just too early to tell.”

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Hurricane Ida Shuts Down More Than 90% of Oil and Gas Production in the Gulf of Mexico

September 1, 2021

Hurricane Ida Shuts Down More Than 90% of Oil and Gas Production in the Gulf of Mexico

Experts say the oil refineries that have been shut down account for 9% of the country’s total.

A gas pump with gas selling for $1.04 a gallon is shown on May 07, 2020 in Baltimore, Maryland.
A gas pump with gas selling for $1.04 a gallon is shown on May 07, 2020 in Baltimore, Maryland. 
Photo: Rob Carr (Getty Images)

As if reversing the course of the Mississippi River, forcing hospitals to hunker down with patients that couldn’t be moved, and nearly shutting off the power and internet in New Orleans wasn’t enough, Hurricane Ida has also disrupted oil and gas production.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on Sunday said that 95.6% of current oil production and 93.7% of the gas production in the Gulf of Mexico had been shut down in response to Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a powerful Category 4 storm in Louisiana. Offshore Gulf operators had to evacuate personnel due to Ida and as of Sunday had moved workers off 288 production platforms, or 51.4% of manned platforms in the area, and 11 rigs, or 100% structures in the area.

In addition, the BSEE reported that 10 dynamically positioned rigs—which are not moored to the seafloor and can change locations in a relatively short period of time—had moved out of the storm’s projected path. They represent 66.7% of the total dynamically positioned rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

A hurricane making landfall in this area is the one of the worst things that could happen to the oil industry, experts told CNN, and could impact the pipelines that ferry fuel to the East Coast. Andy Lipow, president of the Houston-based consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates, told the outlet that six refineries in New Orleans are currently shut down. These refineries—which include PBF, Phillips, Shell, Marathon, and two Valero refineries—produce 1.7 million barrels per day, or 9% of the country’s total.

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Hurricane Ida Exposes Grid Weaknesses As 2,000 Miles of High-Voltage Lines Damaged 

August 31, 2021

Hurricane Ida Exposes Grid Weaknesses As 2,000 Miles of High-Voltage Lines Damaged 

More than a million customers across Louisiana are without power on Tuesday morning. Some reports indicate it could take weeks for the lights to come back on as thousands of miles of transmission lines were damaged after Hurricane Ida rolled through on Sunday.

The Category 4 hurricane raises fresh questions about how well New Orleans and other coastal areas across Lousiana are prepared for natural disasters. As of 0630 ET, PowerOutage.US reports a little more than one million customers are without power across the state’s coastal plain.

Energy provider Entergy Corp has been surveying the damage since Monday and has found 207 transmission lines spanning more than 2,000 miles have been knocked out by the storm, according to WSJ.

Rod West, Entergy’s group president of utility operations, said drones, helicopters, and land-based vehicles are surveying the damage and estimate it could take at least three weeks to restore power.

“The hard part is that the geography is a rather wide swath,” West said. “That three weeks is not going to apply to everybody the same way.” He added some transmission towers need to be replaced entirely due to “significant wind” damage. 

West said the damage to the transmission system is more severe than Hurricane Katrina because Ida made landfall at 150 mph.

Besides transmission lines, some of Entergy’s powerplants have sustained damage. West said the damage at some plants would not hinder energy production. One of their nuclear power plants 25 miles west of New Orleans on the Mississippi River was shuttered ahead of the storm.

West said they’d rebuilt their transmission system over the years to withstand speeds of 150 miles an hour. Still, it appears some of those high-voltage cables that carry electricity from power plants to substations that connect to lower-voltage distribution lines, were no match for Ida.

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“Extremely Dangerous” – Hurricane Ida Almost Category 5 Strength As It Nears Louisiana

August 29, 2021

“Extremely Dangerous” – Hurricane Ida Almost Category 5 Strength As It Nears Louisiana

Hurricane Ida has rapidly strengthened into a major hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 MPH, just seven mph shy of a Category 5. The storm is set to strike Louisiana later this afternoon/evening, and on the same day, 16 years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck the area.

As of 0600 ET, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) plane flew into the storm and found Ida is an “extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane about to make landfall in southeastern Louisiana later today.”

Reports from an NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds have increased to near 150 mph (240 km/h) with higher gusts. The latest minimum central pressure estimated from reconnaissance aircraft data is 935 mb (27.61 in).

An elevated NOAA C-MAN station at Pilot’s Station East near Southwest Pass, Louisiana, recently reported a sustained wind of 82 mph (131 km/h) and a gust to 107 mph (172 km/h). Another NOAA elevated C-MAN station at Southwest Pass recently reported a sustained wind of 77 mph (124 km/h) and a wind gust of 93 mph (150 km/h).

Ida is currently over the Gulf of Mexico where it could strengthen even more before making landfall around 1800 ET.

A Hurricane Warning has been posted for Intracoastal City, Louisiana, to Pearl River, Mississippi.

Storm surges could be significant across Louisiana and Mississippi. For instance, a 10-foot to 15-foot storm surge is forecasted from Morgan City, Louisiana, to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. A storm surge of 5-8 feet is possible for Lake Pontchartrain.

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