Harvey’s second landfall, hitting southwest Louisiana near the Texas border, expanded the growing list of damaged oil refineries, shutting down two key plants, including America’s largest.
The latest hit list potentially reduces U.S. fuel-making capacity to the lowest since 2008, following Hurricane Ike. Motiva Enterprises’s Port Arthur facility in Texas, the biggest U.S. refinery, is shutting because of severe flooding, said a person with knowledge of the operations. Total SA’s refinery in Port Arthur is out with a power loss, a person familiar with that plant said. Those plants are less than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the tropical storm’s 4 a.m. Wednesday landfall just west of Cameron, Louisiana.
The two refineries join more than a dozen others with a combined ability to produce more than 4 million barrels a day, or about 23 percent of U.S. capacity, that are at least partially offline. Gasoline futures are at the highest in two years, and the fuel’s premium to crude is at a 16-month high.