While Hurricane Francine spared southeast Texas by staying far enough away from the Houston area, the storm thrashed coastal Louisiana as a Category 2 event. That has led to impacts of another kind for the Gulf Coast: a disrupted oil-and-gas industry.
As of Sunday, about 20 percent of U.S. Gulf of Mexico crude oil production and 28 percent of natural gas output was offline in the aftermath of Francine. In all, Reuters found that production of about 2.16 million barrels of crude oil and 4.635 billion cubic feet of natural gas were lost due to the storm.
“Our Baton Rouge area facilities are operating as normal. We continue to meet customer commitments,” Exxon spokesperson Lauren Kight told Reuters on Thursday, one day after Francine made landfall in Terrebonne Parish with sustained winds of 100 mph. Exxon had reduced its production Wednesday to as low as 20 percent capacity, said Reuters, and had since recovered to near capacity by Thursday.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on Thursday that about 42 percent of crude production and 53 percent of natural gas production was offline one day after Francine reached Louisiana.
But overall production across the Louisiana Gulf was still coming back to full capacity over the weekend. On Saturday, Reuters reported that two Chevron platforms were operating at partial capacity, and that about 30 percent of Gulf Coast production was offline.
The immediate loss of production led to an increase in prices for crude oil. According to CNBC, crude closed Thursday at just above $68 per barrel. Analysts with UBS said they expected oil prices to rise in the short term, which they did before coming back to around $68 by the close of the workweek. It’s still nearly as low as crude prices have been this year.
Hurricane Francine’s slow approach to Louisiana also led to evacuations in the Gulf of Mexico. World Oil reported that personnel had been taken off of 46 percent of the manned platforms in the Gulf, as of 11:30 a.m. Sept. 11, about five hours before the storm made landfall. The EIA reported Thursday that 99 percent of the platforms were evacuated ahead of the storm’s arrival.
So far, Francine has been the largest weather disruption to the Gulf Coast oil-and-gas the industry in 2024. For comparison’s sake, when Hurricane Beryl slammed the Houston area in July, leaving more than 2 million residents without power for some amount of time, the EIA reported that only about 10 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil-and-gas production was impacted.
Source: chron.com