MOSCOW (MRC) -- Energy companies worked to restore pipeline service and electricity after Tropical Storm Nicholas passed through, allowing them to resume efforts to repair the significant damage caused by Hurricane Ida two weeks ago, reported Reuters.
Nicholas, downgraded to a tropical depression late Tuesday, caused rain, flooding and power outages in Texas and Louisiana, where some refineries remained offline in the wake of Hurricane Ida. The earlier storm shuttered most US Gulf offshore oil and gas production.
Colonial Pipeline, the largest US fuel line, resumed gasoline and diesel shipments on Wednesday after Nicholas passed.
Royal Dutch Shell said it can resume production at its Perdido offshore oil platform that was shut by Nicholas once power is restored at another facility. US liquefied natural gas producer Freeport LNG said processing at its Texas coast facility was halted, likely due to a power outage.
Oil prices rose about 2% on Wednesday after a larger-than-expected decline in US crude inventories. Markets are very tight, said Infrastructure Capital Advisors analyst Andrew Meleney, with gasoline and other refined product inventories near five-year lows.
More than 39% of the US Gulf of Mexico's production of crude and natural gas remained shut, offshore drilling regulator Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said, following Hurricane Ida.
The storm has removed 25 million barrels of oil and 30.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the market. About 720,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude production and 1.075 billion cubic feet per day of gas remained offline on Tuesday.
Nicholas caused widespread power outages as it passed over the Houston area Monday night and Tuesday morning. There were 116,000 homes and businesses in Texas without power early on Wednesday, down from more than 500,000 on Tuesday.
Texas coastal oil refineries sailed through Nicholas. But a few in Louisiana are working to restart after Hurricane Ida, including Valero Energy Corp's refineries in St. Charles and Meraux and PBF Energy's refinery in Chalmette.
As informed previously, Shell said earlier this month it observed damage from Hurricane Ida to its transfer station West Delta-143 offshore facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. West Delta-143 serves as the transfer station for all production from its assets in the Mars corridor in the Mississippi Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico to onshore crude terminals. Shell said then it was not yet safe to send personnel offshore to learn the full extent of the damage and estimate the effect on production.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
MRC