Foreign Policy (US) today (extract): A big hurricane season...

Foreign Policy (US) today (extract):
A big hurricane season could put U.S. natural gas for Europe and Asia in jeopardy.

‘…A severe hurricane season in the Gulf, as is expected this year, is always worrying news for the U.S. oil and gas industry—a big chunk of U.S. federal drilling occurs in offshore Gulf waters, the bulk of U.S. petroleum refining capacity is located along its shores, and big storms mean big disruptions. But now there is a fresh reason to worry about storm-related havoc: The United States, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), has its gas liquefaction plants overwhelmingly concentrated in hurricane alley.
Both Western Europe, because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and East Asia, because of rising energy demand, have become increasingly dependent on U.S. cargoes of supercooled natural gas in recent years.
Over the very short term, much of that could be at risk if forecasts of a severe hurricane season come true; even relatively mild storms, like Hurricane Beryl when it made landfall in the United States, can disrupt U.S. LNG operations for weeks. Over the longer term, a big question is what policy a potential future Harris administration would adopt toward U.S. fossil fuel exports, especially natural gas, which became a political lightning rod this year for the Biden administration.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government’s main storm forecaster, confidently expects a much-busier-than-usual storm season, with an expected four to seven major hurricanes. (The official storm season runs from June 1 to November 30.) That’s due to a mix of La Niña, record-high ocean temperatures, and a strong West African monsoon.

The problem, said ClearView Energy Partners, an energy consultancy, is that about 90 percent of U.S. LNG capacity is vulnerable to storm-related disruption—or more than 10 billion cubic feet per day of LNG export capability. That is more than the amount used by China or Japan, the biggest LNG importers in the world….’