Irma leaves millions isolated: 6 000 petrol stations closed

Published Sep 11, 2017

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Bloomberg -

Hurricane Irma has knocked out power to at least 4.7 million customers,

paralyzed tanker traffic and shut about 6,000 petrol stations. As the storm

heads up Florida’s

west coast, it’s also threatening more than $1 billion worth of crops.

NextEra

Energy Florida Power & Light utility warned Sunday that some customers

may go without power for weeks, and parts of its system may need to be rebuilt

“from the ground up.” The company took offline one of two reactors at a nuclear

plant south of Miami.

Ports critical to supplying the state with gasoline and diesel were also closed

and energy companies including Exxon Mobil and Kinder Morgan Inc. shut fuel

terminals and pipelines.

“Fuel

deliveries in Florida

are virtually nonexistent,” Mansfield Oil, a Georgia-based energy supplier,

said in a report. “Markets will take time to fully recover, particularly if

Irma damages fuelling infrastructure.”

Irma, now a

Category 1 storm and forecast to weaken into a tropical storm as it moves over

northern Florida and Georgia,

threatens to sap natural gas demand by cutting use from power plants. The

hurricane may also wreak havoc on Florida’s

farmlands, menacing $1.2 billion worth of production in the top US grower of

fresh tomatoes, oranges, green beans, cucumbers, squash and sugar cane.

Citrus

production is the most vulnerable of crops as Irma moves north along Florida’s west coast, said Paul Market, a meteorologist

at MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg,

Maryland. About 25 percent of the

crop may be lost.

Florida’s orange, grapefruit and other

citrus trees are full of developing fruit that Irma may blow away. Winds could

also destroy the trees themselves in a region that accounts for almost 10

percent of the nation’s fruit and vegetable farmland. Orange-juice futures and

domestic sugar prices rallied last week as Irma drew closer.

Meanwhile,

ports and terminals including Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Port

Everglades and Jacksonville

were closed to traffic. Florida, which depends

wholly on pipelines and tankers for fuel supplies, was already facing fuel

challenges after Hurricane Harvey knocked offline refining capacity in the Gulf Coast.

Read also: 

Kinder

Morgan shut a pipeline system that carries gasoline, ethanol, diesel and jet

fuel to land-locked Orlando from Tampa; all of its fuel terminals in Florida;

and the Elba Island

liquefied natural gas plant in Georgia.

Florida

Power & Light said in a press conference broadcast online Sunday that

restoring electricity will be “one of the most complex” endeavors the utility’s

ever faced. The feed to the broadcast itself cut out for several minutes due to

a power failure.

“Unfortunately,

we are not immune to Irma’s wrath," Rob Gould, a spokesman for the

utility, said after the feed for the webcast had been restored.

-BLOOMBERG

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