Hurricane Isaac Puts Energy Infrastructure At Risk
Hurricane Isaac is heading for the Gulf Coast and is expected to make landfall sometime Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. While much of the media attention is focused on preparations for emergency response (as well as the delayed Republican National Convention), what does the hurricane mean for our nation’s energy infrastructure?
The Gulf Coast is home to a large concentration of energy-related infrastructure. The region also suffers from the occasional severe hurricane, which puts much of that infrastructure in the line of fire. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms in the Gulf and cut off a significant amount of both oil production capacity and refining activity. The outages caused gasoline prices to spike leading President Bush to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to soften the blow.
The Energy Information Administration put out an interesting map that depicts the energy infrastructure in the Gulf that is at-risk to Hurricane Isaac over the next few days (click here to see the interactive version). Oil refineries, offshore oil platforms, natural gas pipelines and electric power plants are just some of the facilities that could experience damage. Oil prices rose Monday due to concerns over production outages, but later fell as Hurricane Isaac failed to reach “Category 2” status, easing fears.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), a government agency part of the Department of Interior, estimated that 78% of oil production in the Gulf has already been shut down in anticipation of Isaac.
Also, there are several nuclear power plants in the Gulf region. Entergy’s Waterford 3 reactor is located near New Orleans and Entergy shut it down as Katrina approached in 2005. While no problems arose, Entergy was forced to run backup diesel generators since power was out to keep the reactor and spent fuel cool. (See the map below. Data from World Nuclear Association)
Another element is that the Hurricane may churn up oil that was released during the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster from two years ago. Officials are worried that the storm could stir up as much as 1 million barrels of oil that settled in Louisiana’s wetlands. Oil swashing around in water would complicate response efforts.
Fortunately, Hurricane Isaac appears to be less threatening than Hurricane Katrina, and the coast is much better prepared than it was seven years ago.
However, the hurricane highlights the vulnerability to our nation’s energy security, with so much energy infrastructure concentrated in one region. Looking forward, an acceleration of climate change has a scientifically unknown link to major storms – it is possible that major storms will increase in severity and frequency over the coming decades. Prudent risk management would attempt to mitigate this possible vulnerability by diversifying the location of energy infrastructure and ensuring redundant systems.
