Hurricane Harvey shut down a significant portion of Texas’ shale production, cutting off as much as 15% of U.S. oil supplies, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The hurricane has proven to be the first major storm to test U.S. shale, but now the big question is how quickly can the sector bounce back.
Before Harvey made landfall as a hurricane Friday, many big producers in the Eagle Ford shale fields near Corpus Christi, Texas, shut down their oil and gas wells, and initial estimates for lost production were between 400,000 and 500,000 barrels a day.
The Wall Street Journal notes that as a clearer picture of the hurricane’s widespread devastation has emerged, several analysts say it is almost certain that much, if not most, of the region’s 1.4 million barrels a day of output is shut down.
In addition, shale producers also rely on a vast, multibillion-dollar network of energy infrastructure—from ports to train tracks to pipelines. The newspaper points out that many pieces of that network appear to be swamped, slowing shale’s ability to bounce back.
Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal.
