Hurricanes Were Extra Disruptive to US Energy Infrastructure in 2024 — I’m Shocked – CleanTechnica

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After warnings for years from climate scientists that hurricanes were going to get bigger and more destructive, I’m absolutely shocked to learn that hurricanes this year were bigger and more destructive than normal in the US.

Sarcasm aside, I lived through a couple of serious hurricanes, including going through the eye of the biggest hurricane to hit my city on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Luckily, we just lost a bunch of shingles and were terrorized by screaming wind for several hours. Today, the roofers were here to tear up the rest of our roof and start putting on a new one. Up north, my mom got hit worse in Western North Carolina! They lost power for about a week and were out of water for several weeks! The mountain towns and cities of Western North Carolina were just never expecting or prepared to deal with such a hurricane hitting them so strongly (the flooding, most notably).

We are living through more and more extreme weather, and the results are costing the country billions of dollars — not to mention all of the stress, health issues, and unfortunate deaths.

The US Energy Information Administration is now out there explaining just how disruptive this hurricane season was to our energy infrastructure. I’ll end with the administration’s full writeup on this, but suffice to say, it’s been a chilling year, but we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which ran from June 1 through November 30, exhibited above-average activity with more named storms and hurricanes than usual, including several that disrupted U.S. energy infrastructure, primarily on the Gulf Coast and in the Southeast. Energy impacts from hurricanes this season were most notable in electricity markets, although Hurricanes Francine, Helene, and Rafael forced some oil and natural gas production from fields in the Gulf of Mexico to be shut in.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reported 18 named storms in 2024 (winds of 39 miles per hour [mph] or greater). Eleven of those storms had wind speeds of 74 mph or more, classifying them as hurricanes, and five of those intensified to major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater). Five hurricanes made landfall in the continental United States (Beryl, Debby, Francine, Helene, and Milton), with two storms (Helene and Milton) making landfall as major hurricanes. An average hurricane season has 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes, according to NOAA.

Category 3–5 hurricanes
Hurricanes Milton and Helene, major hurricanes (Category 3, 4, or 5) that made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26 and October 9, respectively, caused major power outages and damage to electricity infrastructure on their paths through Florida to the Appalachian Mountains in states such as Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, as well as disruptions to petroleum product supply chains in Florida.

Category 1–2 hurricanes
Three other named storms (Beryl, Debby, and Francine) made landfall in the United States earlier in the hurricane season as either Category 1 or 2 hurricanes. Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Atlantic Basin Category 5 hurricane on record on July 1, before weakening to a Category 1 hurricane and making landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast, a major hub for the U.S. energy industry, on July 8. Due to the weakening, Hurricane Beryl resulted in minimal effects on the U.S. Gulf Coast oil and natural gas industry. Hurricane Debby, which made landfall on August 5 in the Big Bend area of western Florida, also had minimal effects on the U.S. Gulf Coast oil and natural gas industry.

Impacts on the oil and natural gas industry
The paths of the major hurricanes, Milton and Helene, took them away from the most prolific oil- and natural gas-producing areas near Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, but oil and natural gas companies evacuated some platforms and shut in some production from fields in the Gulf of Mexico as a precautionary measure. Hurricane Rafael in November weakened significantly before reaching the U.S. oil and natural gas production hub in the Gulf of Mexico, allowing offshore producers to quickly return to normal operations.

We estimate that unplanned outages of crude oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico due to storms averaged 295,000 barrels per day (b/d) in September and 110,000 b/d in November, accounting for 16% and 5%, respectively, of total crude oil production from federal Gulf of Mexico waters in those months. Unplanned outages of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico due to storms averaged 0.20 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in September and 0.07 Bcf/d in November, accounting for 11% and 3%, respectively, of total natural gas production from federal Gulf of Mexico waters in those months. We did not register any widespread storm-related outages in October.

Thanks to Paul Merolli, Trinity Manning-Pickett, Eulalia Munoz-Cortijo, Kimberly Peterson for that contribution.

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