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Hurricane Ida has severely disrupted the lives of people who live in southeastern Louisiana with power failures, cellphone outages and closed businesses. But the storm also wreaked havoc on the region's biggest industry - oil and gas. Ida's ferocious winds and storm surge made a direct hit on Port Fourchon, the nation's most important hub for the offshore industry in the Gulf of Mexico. NPR's John Burnett reports.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: If you look at a map of Louisiana, the coastline is a vast watery landscape of marshes, swamps, bays, rivers, bayous and barrier islands - as the license plate slogan says, a sportsman's paradise. But this is also a hardworking coast, especially the area clobbered by Hurricane Ida. How bad is it?
MIKE MONCLA: I mean, that is a huge lick to our state and the nation.
BURNETT: Mike Moncla is president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association. More than 250 companies with a stake in the Gulf depend on Port Fourchon.
MONCLA: Twelve hundred trucks per day use Highway 1 that goes to the port down there. To not be able to get oilfield services to those ports is definitely going to hurt our industry and hurt the state.
BURNETT: Ninety percent of the Gulf's production platforms and drilling rigs are serviced out of Port Fourchon. Moreover, 15% of the nation's oil and 5% of its natural gas comes from deposits under the Gulf seabed. One state study projects that a 90-day closure of Port Fourchon would result in a nearly $8 billion reduction in the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
SHUBHRA MISRA: Port Fourchon is the major hub for all of the Gulf in terms of production, in terms of operations, both offshore and onshore.
BURNETT: Shubra Misra is a senior research scientist with the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge.
MISRA: If a facility like Port Fourchon is damaged, the entire supply chain gets interrupted with the corresponding economic impacts.
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