The oil industry is investigating the damage following Hurricane Ida Slams Louisiana

Companies including Marathon Petroleum Corp.

, Valero Energy Corp.

, Phillips 66 and Royal Dutch Shell PLC closed about 8% of the country’s refining capacity before the storm, while Colonial Pipeline Co., the largest pipeline operator in the United States, closed two fuel-carrying lines. Houston to Greensboro, NC Exxon Mobil Corp.

had closed some units at the Baton Rouge chemical and refining complex, but said there was no significant storm damage.

“There is no clarity” around power sources in the region so far, said Tom Kloza, head of global energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). “If they say the southeastern parishes that house many large refineries will not be back on the grid for weeks, it’s a much more serious event.”

Companies in the coming days will work carefully to determine if floods, wind or other impacts from Ida caused damage to the integrity of their facilities or posed environmental threats.

Major storms have caused serious problems for industrial plants in the past, such as in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey flooded caused the failure of a major power source for a plant owned by chemical maker Arkema A

near Houston. The plant caught fire and exploded after the storm.

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilled from a storage tank at a refinery, then owned by Murphy Oil. Corp.

, with some leaks in neighborhoods near New Orleans.

Marathon is developing a schedule to restart its 565,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Garyville, La., A spokesman said. Exxon said its Baton Rouge plant will begin returning operations to normal once it confirms it has access to third-party raw materials and utilities “to stabilize our systems.”

Phillips 66 said its 255,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Belle Chasse, La, was still closed Monday evening and the facility had seized water. He planned to study the impact of Ida “when it is considered safe to do so.”

Gasoline futures rose to 4.3% overnight, but reduced gains and rose about 1.6% on Monday. Average U.S. gasoline prices were expected to have little impact due to the storm, likely to only rise 5 to 10 cents a gallon, analysts say, well below the price hikes that followed Katrina and Harvey.

The average U.S. price per gallon of regular products rose less than a penny to about $ 3.15 on Monday, with roughly flat prices in Louisiana, according to AAA.

However, prolonged refinery shutdowns caused by floods and other delays in the fuel supply chain could raise pump prices by up to 15-25 cents a gallon nationwide, in the worst case. , said Patrick De Haan, head of oil analysis at GasBuddy fuel and price tracker.

“Refineries have adapted to wind speed,” De Haan said. “What they can’t do is build and plan between 12 and 24 inches of rain.”

Data collected by GasBuddy showed that approximately 10% of gas stations in the Baton Rouge area were out of fuel over the weekend, as well as 7.5% near New Orleans. These figures are expected to worsen sharply as Ida passes, and it could take a week or two to recover regional supplies to the hardest-hit areas of the state, De Haan said.

All in all, it was projected that approximately 4.4 million barrels of refining capacity had been in Ida’s path, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, about a quarter of the U.S. total. The firm also estimated that petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 6.5 million tonnes per year of ethylene, a key ingredient for plastics, were vulnerable to the storm.

Dow Inc.,

, owner of a petrochemical plant in Louisiana, said it closed manufacturing operations over the weekend. Other companies with chemical operations that were on the way to Ida included Westlake Chemical Corp.

and NOVA Chemicals Corp., according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

To the uncertainty is added the recovery time of major power failures across the state. Entergia Corp.

, a major Louisiana power provider, said eight power lines in New Orleans had fallen on Sunday, causing the generation to stay offline and leave the city in the dark. On Monday, according to data from poweroutage.us, on Monday the power supply of more than a million customers in Louisiana was extended.

Entergy said he had equipment ready to mobilize from at least 22 states for restoration work, but warned the cuts could last weeks in the areas hardest hit by the storm. Days will pass to determine Ida’s damage to the New Orleans power grid, “and much more time to restore power transmission to the region,” the company said Monday on social media.

Entergy closed a nuclear plant 25 miles west of New Orleans on the Mississippi River before the storm. On Sunday, it lost power off-site and relied on emergency diesel generators, according to a regulatory warning.

Colonial said it expected to put its two key lines back online Monday evening, following damage assessments and security checks. Colonial moves more than 100 million gallons of fuel a day on the 5,500-mile pipeline network from the Gulf Coast to Linden, New Jersey

The Plantation Pipeline also ships gasoline from the region to the east coast and still operates, but Kinder Morgan Inc.

he said his Baton Rouge terminal had lost power, which could affect the pipeline on Monday or Tuesday. The company was checking the extent of the damage to its facilities in Baton Rouge and said the power company was determining the repairs needed to restore the power.

Pipe operator Enbridge Inc. he said he mobilized crews to assess any damage to his facilities or nearby areas.

Offshore oil companies in the U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which account for approximately 17% of U.S. oil production and 5% of natural gas production, had almost completely shut down the flows of their platforms. of production and had evacuated more than half. , according to a report Monday from the Office of Environmental Safety and Enforcement.

This accounted for approximately 1.72 million barrels per day of oil production and 2.1 billion cubic feet per day of offline natural gas production.

Shell said Sunday afternoon that it scheduled a flyover to assess the impact of the storm on its four major offshore platforms Monday afternoon.

Write to Collin Eaton at [email protected] and Jennifer Hiller at [email protected]