The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) downgraded Hurricane Beryl from a Category 5 storm to a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Forecast scale Wednesday morning, as reported by the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC). Beryl is the first hurricane to strengthen to Category 5 this early in the record as it tracks over the southeastern Caribbean Sea. It is expected to hit the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, posing a threat to critical US oil and energy infrastructure on the eastern Gulf coast.
The NHC said Beryl’s winds peaked at about 157 mph before weakening to 145 mph Wednesday morning. Government forecasters predict “some weakening” of the storm over “the next few days” but it will remain a “major hurricane” hitting Jamaica on Wednesday and the Caymans next.
The Mexican Meteorological Service issued a hurricane warning on Wednesday for the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, from Puerto Costa Maya to Cancún, with landfall expected on Friday.
After the Yucatan Peninsula, Beryl’s projected path is directly toward the Texas coast and is then expected to move up toward Louisiana. This region is home to major US oil and gas refineries.
Before the storm, Shell announced Wednesday that it had halted some drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Here are more details from Bloomberg:
The company also began evacuating non-essential personnel as a precaution.
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Shell is also evacuating non-essential personnel from the Whale-enabled, which is not scheduled to begin operations until the end of the year.
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Production from the Shell-operated Perdido platform feeds the HOOPS blend, a medium acid oil with 29.2 API and 1.55% sulphur.
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Perdido oil is delivered via the Hoover Offshore Oil Pipeline (HOOPS) to the Quintana terminal south of Freeport, Texas; from Quintana, oil is transported to Houston’s refining hub, but primarily to the Texas City area.
“Uncertainty remains in predicting Beryl’s track and intensity over the western Gulf of Mexico this weekend. Interests in the western Gulf of Mexico, including southern Texas, should monitor Beryl’s progress,” the NHC wrote in its latest update.
Computer models show the storm’s future path along the Texas coast, where 32 oil refineries are located. Refineries are essential for processing crude oil into products such as gasoline and diesel.
“We’ll have to wait and see where the storm makes landfall,” Mark Schieldrop, spokesman for travel club AAA Northeast, told The Record.
Schieldrop added: “However, if the storm hits oil and gas infrastructure directly, it could lead to higher prices here if refineries there are out for more than a few days.”
At the start of hurricane season, we published a brief titled “La Niña will complicate matters for Biden ahead of election as hurricanes threaten oil refineries,” and that’s exactly what could happen next week.
It only takes a major hurricane to disrupt major refineries on the US Gulf Coast, which could send the average price of gasoline at the pump to the politically sensitive level of $4 a day.
Currently, AAA’s average gas pump prices are at…
By Zerohedge.com
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