U.S. oil, natural gas companies preparing for 2021 hurricane season ‑API

U.S. oil and nat­ur­al gas com­pa­nies are gear­ing up for this year’s fore­cast of an above-aver­age Atlantic hur­ri­cane sea­son, a secu­ri­ty and emer­gency expert with the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute (API) said on Wednesday.

Last year’s record 30 named storms forced shut­downs of off­shore oil pro­duc­tion that reached, at one point, 90% of 1.9 mil­lion bar­rels per day in pro­duc­tion and idled refiner­ies for weeks.

Two refiner­ies in hard-hit Lake Charles, Louisiana, were shut for months.

“We’re try­ing to be as pre­pared as pos­si­ble in 2021,” said Suzanne Lemieux, API’s oper­a­tions secu­ri­ty and emer­gency man­ag­er, said on a con­fer­ence call with ener­gy indus­try experts to dis­cuss hur­ri­cane sea­son preparations.

Oil and gas com­pa­nies have increased the num­ber of drills and exer­cis­es, she said.

U.S. Gulf Coast refin­ers have revised plans after wide­spread storm-relat­ed out­ages, said Jeff Gun­nulf­sen, direc­tor of secu­ri­ty and risk man­age­ment for trade group Amer­i­can Fuel & Petro­chem­i­cal Manufacturers.

Refin­ers have increased com­mu­ni­ca­tion with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and oth­er indus­tries as well as hard­en­ing refin­ery units and repo­si­tion­ing equip­ment to avoid flood­wa­ters, Gun­nulf­sen said.

The U.S. Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA) fore­cast between three and five major hur­ri­canes this year, with sus­tained winds of at least 111 miles per hour (178 kph).

Between six and 10 hur­ri­canes with winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) are expect­ed out of 13–20 trop­i­cal storms in 2021, NOAA fore­cast­ers said. Trop­i­cal storms have winds of at least 39 mph (63 kph).