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Hurricane
Katrina and Rita Research
The heavy concentration of oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation’s largest sources of oil and gas production, was dealt a one-two punch by category-5 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, causing destruction and substantial damage to offshore platforms within a four-week period in August and September of 2005. Based on central pressure, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were ranked as two of the ten most intense Hurricanes to ever hit the Atlantic Region and the greatest natural disasters to oil and gas development in the history of the Gulf of Mexico. Both hurricanes registered as category-5 storms with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph, peak wind gusts up to 235 mph and central pressure as low as 902 mbar. MMS estimates that 3,050 of the Gulf’s 4,000 platforms and 22,000 of the 33,000 miles of Gulf pipelines were in the direct path of either Hurricane Katrina or Rita resulting in the destruction of 115 platforms, damaged to 52 others, damage of 535 pipeline segments, and near total shut-down of the Gulf's offshore oil and gas production. Fortunately for all, due to the prompt evacuation and shut-in preparations made by operating and service personnel, there was no loss of life and no major oil spills attributed to either storm.
Another important measurement is the hurricanes' impacts
longevity. Over nine months later, 22% of federal oil production and 13%
of gas production remained
shut-in resulting in the loss of 150 million barrels of oil and 730
billion cubic feet of gas from domestic supplies.
To aid MMS's effort to better understand these natural
events and to prepare and protect our nation's energy supply against the
devastating impacts that result, MMS funded the following four research
projects through the Technology
Assessment and Research (TA&R) Program. Click on the project number to
link to a summary and status report.
In addition to the aforementioned projects, MMS is funding
research through the
Environmental Studies (ES) Program as identified below. Click on a topic
heading to link to it's summary. Click on a topic heading to navigate to
it's summary. For more information, please email Michael Else. Privacy | Disclaimers | Accessibility | Topic Index | FOIA Last Updated: 08/08/2008, 01:30 PM |