Hurricane Ida Passage Over Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Offshore Facilities

Abstract

Abstract Hurricane Ida made landfall in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, as a Category 4 hurricane on August 29th, 2021, traveling over some offshore oil and gas facilities on its path. Shell Exploration and Production's offshore oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) have the most comprehensive suite of metocean instrumentation in the region, including wave and wind systems that captured the passage of hurricane Ida. This paper analyzes the wind and wave conditions measured by some Shell facilities located along the path of hurricane Ida. The number of LiDAR wind profilers and their spatial distribution with respect to Ida makes Shell the only operator in the Gulf of Mexico able to provide a detailed vertical wind profile at multiple locations throughout the extreme wind event. These observations, combined with satellite products such as Sea Surface Height (SSH) and Sea Surface Temperature (SST), help understand the hurricane track and intensity. Three Shell Tension Leg Platforms (TLPs) and one Semi-Submersible offshore Louisiana, measured wave data, with an overall maximum wave height of 21 m and a maximum significant wave height of 13 m. Two Shell TLPs and one Semi-Submersible measured wind profiles with maximum wind speeds of 46.82 ms−1 (91 knots, 104 mph), 43.52 ms−1 (84 knots, 97 mph), and 39.95 ms−1 (77 knots, 89 mph). Out of those three Platforms, the two sites that captured the strongest wind speeds were located right on Ida's path, where it was possible to record the wind direction shift as Hurricane Ida passed over the, and the third site was east of the track.