Hurricane Matthew is threatening to shut in about 33 million barrels of oil storage in the Bahamas and disrupt Caribbean shipping this week before heading northwest toward the U.S. East Coast.
Statoil ASA plans to evacuate workers later this week at its 6.7 million-barrel South Riding Point terminal in Freeport, the Bahamas, Peter Symons, a Houston-based spokesman, said in an e-mail. The facility is on Grand Bahama Island, which was placed under a hurricane watch Monday, meaning that hurricane conditions are possible within 48 hours. Buckeye Partners LP also operates a 26.2 million-barrel terminal on the island. Officials with the Houston company didn’t immediately respond to e-mails and calls for comment.
The two terminals “are significant for storage and are used for blending and transshipment of crude and petroleum products,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a Houston-based consulting company, said in a telephone interview.
Matthew, a major hurricane with 140 mile (220 kilometer) per hour winds, is a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Hurricane-strength winds were forecast to reach Haiti within hours and eastern Cuba and the Bahamas on Tuesday. As much as 40 inches of rain could fall in parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, while Cuba and Jamaica could get up to 20 inches. Hurricane warnings are in place for the central and southeastern Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica and parts of Cuba.
There are two petroleum terminals in Jamaica, one operated by Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc. and Petroleum Corp. of Jamaica, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Neither company responded to e-mails or calls seeking comment.
As the storm heads north, it may also affect ship traffic, delaying the delivery of gasoline into New York Harbor and southeastern U.S. markets including Florida, Lipow said.
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