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Gulf hit by infrastructure outages
UNITED STATES
THE US Gulf of Mexico is reported to have been hit by infrastructure outages.
A leak at a booster station in Louisiana is reported to have led to operations on two oil pipelines being suspended. This in turn has caused outages at six offshore oil and gas fields.
On August 11, Shell suspended operations on its Mars and Amberjack pipelines. The pipelines carry combined volumes of up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from the Gulf to the coast.
The pipeline outages then resulted in the clo- sure of Shell’s Mars, Ursa and Olympus fields, as well as Chevron’s Jack/St. Malo, Tahiti and Big Foot fields.
A Shell spokesperson was cited by Bloomberg as saying the super-major was looking at alterna- tive flow paths to connecting carriers.
Few further details were known about the potential severity and duration of the outage as of August 11.
The disruption strengthened prices for regional sour crude benchmark Mars Blend. While crude benchmark prices remained below the highs seen earlier this year, oil prices are nonetheless strong amid growing demand and various supply disruptions globally.
Brent was trading above $99 per barrel on August 11, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) traded at around $94 per barrel. The outage comes at a time of tight supplies globally.
The US has sought to shelter its domestic market by releasing record volumes from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but the impact of this has been comparatively limited and stocks remain below the five-year average.
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that oil demand will continue rising over the course of this year, which could potentially cause global supplies to tighten further.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 32 11•August•2022