Busy Hurricane Season Could Threaten Global Energy Security

May 26, 2022--Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--This will be the seventh year in a row for an above-average Atlantic hurricane season, the timing of which poses a risk to the global energy balance due to the dominance of U.S. crude oil and natural gas. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its annual forecast for hurricanes in the Atlantic, a few short days before the official start of the hurricane season. The hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, but at least one tropical storm already has been spotted off the U.S. Gulf Coast this year. NOAA is expecting as many as 21 named storms for the year, of which as many as 10 could become hurricanes. While there were only seven hurricanes last year, the storms that did make landfall dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. energy sector. At its peak, for example, Hurricane Ida last year idled about 93% of the oil production in the U.S. territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico and about 90% of the total gas output.