Hurricane Harvey Leaves its Mark on Gulf Coast Energy Sector

Our thoughts are with our employees and customers in the Houston area and all those impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Aside from the devastating impact of the storm, Hurricane Harvey has also impacted the energy market.

Few states have as much direct impact on the energy sector as Texas. Despite all the disruptions and damage that Harvey caused, the energy sector has remained resilient overall. While many groups expect little impact to operations in the long run, Harvey has demonstrated that various energy sectors are subject to the impact of a storm. Production, traditional load demand and new LNG export facilities can all be affected by extreme weather conditions.

Let’s take a closer look at how the energy sector is responding in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey:

Crude Jumps as Refinery Production Stalls

The Gulf Coast is home to 40% of the refinery capacity in the U.S. According to WSJ & CNBC reports, Hurricane Harvey has disrupted between 20 and 25 percent of the entire nation’s refining capacity.

Texas refineries were still about 3 million barrels below their daily average early the week of September 4^th. This is due to shut-in oil production in Texas and outages from flooding that have caused reduced operations.

According to the Department of Energy’s Daily Events report (as of September 6^th):

• 5 Gulf Coast refineries remain shut down
• 6 are in the process of restarting
• 7 are operating at reduced rates

Impact to Gasoline Prices

This disruption to refineries has had a major impact on U.S. gasoline prices. The biggest impact has been due to delivery disruptions. Deliveries from the Colonial pipeline, which carries gas from the Gulf Coast across the Southeast and up to the Northeast, was shut down for a period of time. It has since restarted operations. The Southeast will be impacted the most as the map below illustrates. The Northeast and South will also see great impacts from disrupted delivery.

Source: EIA

Natural Gas Production Stabilizes to Pre-Harvey Levels

Both onshore and offshore natural gas production in TX was impacted by Harvey. Production across the Lower 48 also declined from 73 Bcf/d to 71 Bcf/d as a result of the hurricane. Crews were able to return to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico this week while onshore producers reported that they expect little impact on their operations in the long run.

Notably, the nation’s only operating LNG export facility, Sabine Pass, which is located across from Port Arthur, TX, was not directly impacted by Harvey. Sabine Pass had to significantly reduce operations around August 31^st due to ships being restricted from entering the intercostal waterway due to “unprecedented currents on the Neches River” after Harvey. As a result, it was over two weeks since a ship had arrived at Sabine Pass. The first arrival in the aftermath of Harvey was on September 6^th.  Storage tanks at Sabine Pass were so full that gas had to be turned away throughout the week.  With four of the current five approved LNG export facilities under construction located in the Gulf Coast, future storms could significantly impact export demand. Current demand at Sabine Pass was 2 Bcf/d but if total Gulf Coast demand is ~7-8 Bcf/d by 2019, future storms could have a greater impact.

The impacts on production as Sabine Pass can be seen in the tables below:

Please note the weekly drop in dry production.

Source: EIA

Please note the change in power generation and LNG pipline receipts.