Hurricane Nate Heads For Gulf Coast: Goldman Projects Dramatic Refining Slowdown

Confirming an earlier projection by Accuweather that showed Hurricane Nate will likely make landfall as a cateogry one storm somewhere between Louisiana and the Florida panhandle on Sunday, the NHC has issued a hurricane warning - the highest-priority of the agency"s alert levels - for a broad swath of the Southern US stretching from Grand Isle Louisiana to the Florida-Alabama border.

Here are the key messages for Tropical Storm #Nate for Advisory 9. https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFb pic.twitter.com/OI9j3OcE74

— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) October 6, 2017

As we noted earlier, unlike with Hurricane Irma, most of the models for Hurricane Nate consistently see the storm moving directly north through the Gulf before turning to northeast to follow the eastern U.S. shorline. 

Here are more details about storm-related warnings from the NHC:

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for...
* Grand Isle Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border

A Storm Surge Warning is in effect for...
* Morgan City Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border
* Northern and western shores of Lake Pontchartrain

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for...
* Punta Herrero to Rio Lagartos Mexico
* Pinar del Rio
* Metropolitan New Orleans
* Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas
* West of Grand Isle to Morgan City Louisiana

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for...
* Punta Herrero to Rio Lagartos Mexico
* Metropolitan New Orleans
* Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas
* East of the Alabama/Florida border to the Okaloosa/Walton County
Line
* West of Grand Isle to Morgan City Louisiana

A Storm Surge Watch is in effect for...
* East of the Alabama/Florida border to Indian Pass Florida

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for...
* East of the Okaloosa/Walton County Line to Indian Pass Florida
* West of Morgan City to Intracoastal City Louisiana
* Isle of Youth

Like they did with Hurricane Harvey, energy traders will be hyper focused this weekend on how the massive network of Gulf drilling platforms might be impacted by the storm.

As Goldman Sachs explains, a new storm, Nate, is heading for the US Gulf Coast and is expected to land as a category 1 hurricane in Louisiana on Sunday.

While the overall impact on the US oil sector is likely to be more modest than for Harvey (category 4 at landfall), it may have a similar supply impact given the path threatens more US Gulf Coast platforms. The demand impact is likely to be much smaller than Harvey given the lower intensity of the storm, the smaller amount of downstream capacity at risk and finally the smaller population impacted. On the refining side, 2.4 mb/d of refining capacity is at risk (13% of US capacity).

We expect the storm to likely (1) have little or only a slightly bullish aggregate impact on the global oil market in October given the expected similarly modest supply and demand losses, (2) support US and global refining margins, with distillate likely to be most sustainably impacted given the already low inventory levels, and finally (3) reduce US crude export flows, initially weighing on the WTI-Brent spread.

The resiliency of the US oil infrastructure during Harvey and the lesser intensity of the storm suggest however that these impacts should remain overall modest with flooding along the Mississippi River the likely greater threat.

Of course, as Accuweather warned earlier, warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico could bolster the storm as it moves northeast from Central America toward the southwestern US.