Hurricane Ida, which stormed through Louisiana at the end of August, has led to oil supply losses of 30 million barrels so far, driving the first decline in global oil supply in five months and pushing global inventories sharply down, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.
Initially, Hurricane Ida shut in as much as 1.74 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil production, or 95.65 percent of the total crude pumped in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. On the day when the hurricane made landfall, a total of 288 production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were evacuated. This was more than half of the manned platforms in the Gulf.
Due to the storm's severity and the damage identified at some offshore platforms and facilities, crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been slow to restart.
Two weeks after Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, a total of 43.60 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's oil production, or 793,522 bpd, was still shut in as of September 13, according to data from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
"Unexpected outages during August forced a decline in supply for the first time in five months and extended the sharp drawdown in global oil stocks. The most severe by far was Hurricane Ida, which wreaked havoc on the key US Gulf Coast oil producing region at the end of August, knocking 1.7 mb/d offline," the IEA said in its Oil Market Report for September published today.
The impact of Hurricane Ida "is still causing problems for US and global markets," said the agency.
"Offshore installations and refineries have been slow to restart due to the severity of the storm, forcing massive stock draws of both crude and products in key markets. The biggest impact on supply will be seen in September, with total supply losses estimated at around 30 mb," the IEA noted.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More