Hurricane Isaac and the Importance of New Orleans (Dispatch)
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript:
Hurricane season is upon the North Atlantic, and Hurricane Isaac is squaring up to hit New Orleans on Aug. 28. The hurricane will affect U.S. output of oil and natural gas and will test New Orleans' infrastructure. Though Isaac isn’t expected to be as devastating as previous hurricanes, it provides us an opportunity to examine the strategic significance of the Gulf of Mexico generally, and New Orleans in particular.
The Caribbean Basin plays a key role in the Western Hemisphere. Not only is it the most strategic corridor for U.S. shipping, but the Panama Canal and associated maritime shipping routes are a chokepoint for interoceanic trade. This will become increasingly true when the Panama Canal doubles its capacity in 2014.
The Caribbean is also the terminus of Hurricane Alley, a stretch of storm-generating seas running from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes are a type of tropical cyclone found in the North Atlantic and Eastern Pacific; their strong winds and devastating storm surges frequently devastate smaller Caribbean nations and occasionally impact the United States dramatically. Even smaller hurricanes and tropical storms have implications for U.S. shippers, petroleum drillers and homeowners who have to adapt to volatile weather in the summer months.
Isaac is a Category 1 hurricane, and will be the second hurricane to hit New Orleans directly since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city seven years ago. Although Isaac is following a similar path to Katrina, it will be significantly less powerful. Nevertheless, the storm will be a test of the repairs to levees and other infrastructure that have been made since Katrina.
One of the affected industries will be offshore hydrocarbon production in the Gulf of Mexico. Gulf energy output constitutes 7 percent of the total U.S. natural gas production and 13 percent of liquid fuels. In preparation for Isaac, energy personnel have been evacuated from more than half of the production platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. As a precaution against oil and natural gas leakage, the standard procedure for gulf operators is to close safety valves that lie below the surface of the sea floor. When they are able to return, undamaged rigs will restart quickly, with damaged rigs taking longer to get back online.
Outside of energy production, there are more lasting geographic reasons to be concerned about hurricanes in Louisiana. The navigable rivers of the Greater Mississippi Basin connect the fertile basin of the U.S. Midwest to global markets and are the foundation of U.S. wealth. The ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans are the outlets for this river network, and their viability is as important today as at any point during U.S. history. Without these ports, the U.S. would have to significantly reorder the way it exports and imports goods.
For this reason, major storms in the Caribbean have the potential to dramatically impact the world’s largest economy with knock-on effects to the rest of the world system.
