Hurricane Ida Caused Major Damage to Louisiana Natural Gas Plants

Hurricane Ida, which hit the coast with 150-mile-per-hour winds, has devastated gasoline plants in Louisiana. As a result, nearly 95% of offshore oil and gas production was off due to the storm. However, the prices of oil and natural as have not yet moved up as anticipated by industry experts.

The Gulf Coast is central to the oil and natural gas companies and the chemical and shipping industries of the United States. As oil and gas companies were alerted of the Hurricane, the refineries and petrochemical plants shut down their operations and evacuated the offshore workers from the plants.

Ahead of the Hurricane, various natural gas plants along the coast were alerted to shut down their operations, including the Baton Rouge facility of the Formosa Plastics USA and ExxonMobil. Other complexes that shut down are OxyChem, OxyChem, NOVA Chemical Shell, Shintech, and Dow Chemical.

The Colonial Pipeline Co (COLPI.UL), which is United States’ largest gasoline pipeline, has also been hard hit by the Hurricane. The network supplies almost half of gasoline and diesel along the U.S. East Coast. However, the facility may start pumping in the coming few days. The outages could push the retail prices of gasoline up to 5 to 15% if the further process is halted. Patrick De Haan, the petroleum analyst said, the extent of price surge depends on how quickly the electric power supply and the Colonial Pipeline restart their operations.