Energy companies were assessing the health of refineries,
pipelines, petrochemical plants
and offshore oil platforms
along the central Gulf of Mexico coast on Monday, the day
after Ida struck Louisiana as a
powerful Category 4 hurricane.
Widespread flooding and
power outages affecting more
than one million customers
across the state could leave
gasoline makers along the
banks of the Mississippi River
scrambling to restart operations after they assess damages this week, analysts said.
Companies including Marathon Petroleum Corp., Valero
Energy Corp., Phillips 66 and
Royal Dutch Shell PLC shut
roughly 8% of the nation’s refining capacity ahead of the
storm, while Colonial Pipeline
Co., operator of the largest U.S.
fuel pipeline, closed two lines
that carry fuel from Houston to
Greensboro, N.C. Exxon Mobil
Corp. had shut some units at its
chemicals and refining complex
in Baton Rouge but said there was no significant damage.
“There’s no clarity,” around
power supplies in the region as
of yet, said Tom Kloza, global
head of energy analysis for Oil
Price Information Service. “If
they say the southeastern parishes that house a lot of big refineries aren’t going to be back
on the grid for weeks, it’s a
much more serious event.”
Companies in coming days
U.S. NEWS
will work carefully to determine whether flooding, wind
or other impacts of Ida caused
any damage to the integrity of
their facilities or posed any environmental threats.
Storms have caused severe
problems for industrial plants
in the past, such as in 2017,
when flooding from Hurricane
Harvey led to a failure of a
main power source for a plant
owned by chemical maker
Arkema SA near Houston. The
plant caught fire and exploded
after the storm. In 2005, after
Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of
thousands of gallons of oil
spilled from a tank at a refinery, then owned by Murphy Oil
Corp., near New Orleans.
Marathon is developing a
timeline to restart its 565,000
barrel-a-day refinery at
Garyville, La., a spokesman
said. Exxon said its Baton
Rouge plant will start returning operations to normal once
it confirms it has access to
feedstocks and third-party utilities “to stabilize our systems.”
Phillips 66 said its 255,000
barrel-per-day refinery in Belle
Chasse, La. was closed Monday
evening, and that the facility
had taken on water. It planned
to survey Ida’s impact “when it
is deemed safe to do so.”
Gasoline futures rose as
much as 4.3% overnight but
pared gains and were up about
1.6% Monday. Average U.S. gasoline prices were expected to
register little impact from the
storm, likely only rising 5 to 10
cents a gallon, analysts said,
well below price surges that
followed Katrina and Harvey.
The average U.S. price for a
gallon of regular rose less than
1 cent to about $3.15 Monday,
with prices roughly flat in Louisiana, according to AAA.
Still, prolonged refinery
shutdowns caused by flooding
and other delays in the fuel
supply chain could push pump
prices higher, by as much as 15
to 25 cents a gallon nationally
in the worst-case scenario, said
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at fuel and price
tracker GasBuddy.
Data from GasBuddy showed
about 10% of gasoline stations
in the Baton Rouge area were
out of fuel over the weekend,
as were 7.5% near New Orleans.