NEWS

The tropical storm formerly known as Hurricane Harvey continues to dump copious amounts of rain on the Houston area. As a former Houston resident who lived there during the massive flooding from Tropical Storm Allison, I don’t think the city has ever seen anything like what it’s currently experiencing.

Houston is the central hub for the energy industry in the U.S. It is important for oil and refined product imports and exports, it is an important storage area for oil and refined products, and much of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is close by.

There is also some onshore oil production in the general area, and quite a bit of offshore production. But perhaps most importantly, the five largest oil refineries in the U.S. are on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, and the two largest refineries in the country are in the vicinity of Houston.

As Tropical Storm Harvey continues to cause severe flooding in the Houston area, how might this impact the oil market?

If you consider the relative locations of oil production and oil refining in Texas, it seems the latter will likely experience the worst outages for the longest period of time. Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, which is also another major refining center. These refineries didn’t experience the kind of flooding currently being seen in the Houston area, but they did have to shut down as the hurricane approached. They will likely be back up and running at full capacity this week, barring more extensive damage than has been reported thus far.

The real problem is further up the coast. The Houston-area refineries will likely experience significant flooding, and transportation in the region will be challenging for days. That means not only will the refineries have maintenance issues to deal with, but there will also be personnel issues as employees attempt to deal with their own flood-induced problems.