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Oil mixed as Hurricane Ida slams U.S. crude hub, Louisiana
Oil prices pared early gains on Monday, off more than three-week highs reached earlier in the session as a powerful hurricane ploughing through the Gulf of Mexico https://www.reuters.com/world/us/gulf-coast-ports-close-loop-halts-oil-deliveries-ahead-hurricane-ida-2021-08-29 forced shutdowns and evacuations of hundreds of offshore oil platforms.
U.S. gasoline prices rose more than 3 per cent as power outages added to refinery closures on the Gulf coast.
Brent was up 27 cents or 0.4 per cent at $72.97 a barrel by 0337 GMT. It rose more than 11 per cent last week in anticipation of disruptions to oil production from Ida.
U.S. oil turned negative and was down by 6 cents at $68.68 a barrel, having jumped a little over 10 per cent over last week.
The benchmarks hit highs not seen since early August, $73.69 and $69.64, respectively, earlier in the session, as Ida slammed into the coast near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, a hub of the Gulf’s offshore energy industry.
“It’s still early days to know the full impact of Hurricane Ida,” said Vivek Dhar, commodities analyst at Commonweath Bank of Australia.
“Oil products, like gasoline and diesel, are likely to see prices rise more acutely from refinery outages, especially if there are difficulties in bringing refineries and pipelines back online,” he added.
PBF Energy’s 190,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana, has been shut down by a power outage caused by Ida, sources told Reuters.
Marathon Petroleum Corp shut its 578,000 bpd in Garyville, Louisiana, as the storm approached.
Colonial Pipeline Co, the operator of the largest petroleum products pipeline in the United States, said on Sunday it would temporarily halt fuel deliveries from Houston to Greensboro, North Carolina due to Ida.
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