Hurricane Ike Shuts Down Heart of Nation’s Oil and Gas Industries

The arrival of Hurricane Ike in southern Texas shut down the heart of the nation’s oil and gas industry, as companies evacuated production platforms and closed down refineries along the Gulf Coast.

In anticipation of what was expected to be a Category 3 storm, nearly 98 percent of the oil and 94 percent of the natural gas production in the Gulf had been shut down as of yesterday afternoon, according to the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.

It is the second time in two weeks that the region has been exposed to a crippling storm. Strategists usually focus on the U.S. reliance on imports of foreign oil, but lately the greater fear has been for the nation’s own supplies and their vulnerability to Mother Nature.

“Ike couldn’t have come at a worse time,” said Daniel Ahm, an energy economist at Lehman Brothers. “Gustav had already ripped through with surprisingly little damage, but it is reminiscent of what happened with Rita and Katrina.” The first of those 2005 storms caused relatively little damage, he said, but the second caused more, in part because it “was inflicted on already weakened infrastructure.”

Washington Post