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Cyclone Gonu Thread 4

Posted by Prof. Goose on June 7, 2007 - 10:22am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bandar abbas, cyclone, cyclone gonu, gas prices, india, iran, mina al fahal, muscat, oil, oil prices, oman, pakistan, peak oil, qalhat, sur, united arab emirates [list all tags]

As of noon EDT on 6/7, this is the Gonu post of record.

The final models from Chuck Watson of KAC/UCF are in and they are forecasting, based on their damage models, that:

* Qalhat (Sur) LNG terminal: 18 days down time
* Mina al Fahal oil terminal: 14 days down time

(NB: These final damage estimates decreased a bit from initial runs but have been close to these numbers all along--all assume US construction standards.)

Why did we spend so much time on this? As I said before, that answer begins with the fact that the world production of petroleum is plateauing around 85 mbbl/day, so any slight blip in supply or exporting could be quite noticeable on the world markets--as a sizeable portion of the world's petroleum exports go through the Gulf of Oman. This has not changed. Had Gonu remained a more powerful cyclone, because of the lack of supply available to the market I mention above, the scenario could have played out quite differently.

And even so, there are a lot of things we do not know yet. The storm still may have affected petroleum exports from Iran and the UAE for that matter--mainly because of shipping disruptions in the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, but there could also be some real effects on infrastructure and assets depending on storm surge, track and landfall--factors we are still learning about.

I am happy that the human and material cost of this storm has been much smaller than we expected to this point. I hope that people do not forget the people whose lives have been changed by this storm...and there are many in Oman and other countries who need our charitable help. I hope that the news continues to be better than we expected--but I still stand by my decision to cover this storm closely on The Oil Drum.

Under the fold (hit "there's more") are links to previous threads and links to all of the resources we used over the course of the coverage of Gonu. We would ask that you deposit new material in this comment thread.

Here are links to our first Cyclone Gonu Thread (6/4), our second thread on the same topic (6/5), our third thread that covered much of the "landfall" of Gonu on 6/6.

Please put all new resources and insights here as of noon EDT 6/7, but make sure to check out the first threads as well.

Resources:

Particularly, Oman also matters in this because it produces 743,000 bbl/day; Oman is also a net exporter, non-OPEC, whose production peaked earlier in the decade.

The latest from Margie Kieper at Weather Underground:

Gonu evaporated, essentially, today, while traversing the Gulf of Oman. Clouds over the center dissipated, and convection thinned and dispersed outward. It appears that damage was severe along the extreme southeastern coast that I talked about on Jeff's blog Tuesday. Roads to the area have been washed out, and now that winds have subsided, helicopters will be able to access the area. It will be morning shortly in Oman, and likely this will bring the first news of what has happened in these areas. [...] The TRMM product indicated that about 175mm of rain fell in Mascat the last 24 hours.

Earlier in the day from Margie Kieper and Steve Gregory (on Jeff Masters' blog) over at Weather Underground:

This is an unprecedented event. NO CYCLONE has ever entered the Gulf of Oman. And there are no custom 'storm surge' models available for that area. This forecast is based on my experience and subjective analysis of the seabed slope and storm surge interaction with the sea floor. Considering the region has never experienced a hurricane, let alone a strong one it is highly unlikely the loading facilities or platforms were constructed to withstand the forces - both wave action and wind force - that they will experience. Significant, damage will occur. How much long term damage, and the volumes associated with it - can not be determined at this time.

And here's links to track map:

http://hurricane.methaz.org/gonu/trackmap.png

Damage assessment:

http://hurricane.methaz.org/gonu/idamage.png

Storm surge modeling:

http://hurricane.methaz.org/gonu/surge.png

Here's a link to a map of land-based oil assets on the peninsula.

Regarding GONU...
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=gonu

Sorted by date...
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=gonu&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n

http://wwwa.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp?blog=andrews&date=2007-06-04_...

--I can say with confidence that this forecaster has never seen the likes of this

If you go here, and click
on the North Indian Ocean links, you can get a feel for how rare this is. From 1995 on, no tropical storm of any strength ever reached the Persian Gulf.

http://tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_strait_of_hormu...

(from Stuart: There's past year storm tracks at The University of Hawaii (click on the North Indian years). Here's the most active past year I could find (1998):

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iran/Background.html

Here's a map of the area:

(here's full size).

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