Oil companies are shutting down offshore production in the Gulf in anticipation of Hurricane Isaias, which is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane Friday night or early Saturday morning.
Major producers including Shell, BP and Chevron have been monitoring the storm and have ordered evacuations.
While fuel prices have skyrocketed during the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran, energy experts who spoke withHouston Public Mediasaid they don't expect Hurricane Isaias to have much of an impact on gas prices, despite shortages caused by the conflict.
"We should not see much of an impact domestically, mainly because the storm is going into the east of the petrochemical refinery heart of America, which is the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast," University of Houston Energy Fellow Ed Hirs said.
Even so, Don Redman, a spokesperson for AAA Louisiana, said gas stations may choose to raise their prices slightly to make up for any losses during the storm. But he said strict state laws against profiteering will deter them from major price hikes.
“Speculators are always concerned whenever there’s a named storm in the Gulf, but there doesn’t seem to be a big concern about what this is going do, at least in the short term,” he said.
As of Thursday, about a third of oil platforms in the Gulf had been evacuated, according to theMarineMinerals Administration, which is part of the Department of the Interior.
With this shutdown, the federal government estimates oil production in the Gulf has decreased by nearly 1.3 million barrels per day. That's about two-thirds of oil production in the Gulf.
Still, the U.S. produces about 14 million barrels of petroleum each day. The decrease caused by closures in the Gulf amounts to about 9% of total U.S. oil production.
Once the storm passes, companies have to send out a crew to assess the damage and check for spills before these facilities are up and running again.
It usually takes about a week for these facilities to resume operations if there aren't major power outages or damage caused by the hurricane.
Erik Milito is the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an industry group for offshore energy companies. He said oil companies are used to hurricane preparation, because these storms are a routine part of life in the Gulf.
"We want to make sure that we're producing our energy out there," he said. "But at the same time, our industry knows we've got to take breaks when you have these types of hurricanes come through."
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