“Global refining margins are going to stay very strong,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of Petromatrix, told Reuters. “If (U.S.) refineries shut down for more than a week, Asia will need to run at a higher level, because there’s no spare capacity in Europe.”
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Goldman Sachs analysts project refined product prices could rise further in the wake of the storm. Looking at the effects of past hurricanes, Goldman calculated the storm could cut gasoline supplies by 615,000 to 785,000 barrels per day and diminish distillate supplies by 700,000 barrels per day.
“Larger refinery outages would increase these long crude and short product impacts,” Goldman said. “The loss of (U.S. Gulf Coast) refining capacity will further support refinery margins for non-affected refiners to incentivize them to operate at higher utilization.”
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