Washington Post By Steven Mufson August 29/2017
Deadly tropical storm Harvey delivered its second punch on the U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday, adding to the misery of thousands in the region and keeping its tight grip on the core of the U.S. energy industry.
Harvey, which made its first landfall as a Category 4 hurricane over the weekend, has left at least 20 dead and thousands displaced in its aftermath of record-shattering rain and flooding.
It has knocked out more than 20% of total U.S. refining capacity, which is highly concentrated along the Gulf Coast. More refineries are now shut down, including the nation’s largest, Motiva Enterprises’s Port Arthur refinery, which had been running at limited capacity.
“We view persistent refinery and midstream capacity outages as the two biggest potential sources of sustainable disruptions, in turn creating risk that the ongoing recovery in production will only be partial,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note Wednesday.
The refinery shutdowns, port closures, and production disruptions have left energy markets long 1.9 million barrels a day of crude, short 1.1 million barrels a day of gasoline, and short 800,000 barrels a day of distillates since Thursday, the day before the storm hit, the Goldman analysts said.
More:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-refineries-come-off-line-in-harveys-wake-2017-08-30