No, Rigzone, excessive climate circumstances are usually not changing into more and more harmful for oil and fuel firms – what's happening with that?
From the climateREALISM
By Linnea Lueken
Offshore production platform, 2019, photographed by Linnea Lueken
A recent article on Rigzone titled “How Dangerous Are Extreme Weather Events for Oil and Gas Companies in 2024?” reiterates the claim that extreme weather events such as hurricanes are getting worse and therefore pose a major risk to oil and gas companies, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore oil operations are threatened by hurricanes, but this is nothing new, it is a threat every hurricane season, so operators should work on improving weather forecasting technologies and response plans to reduce the risk. This is true regardless of climate change, because hurricanes have actually not become more frequent or more severe.
The Rigzone article consists primarily of interviews with some oilfield “experts,” notably an economist named Frederick J. Lawrence, who is the first to make the obvious observation that extreme weather can be a risk factor for the oil and gas industry and that “in addition to improved standards and resilience, preparation and faster response will always be needed.”
Lawrence is the one who makes the claim later in the article that “increased preparations for extreme weather events will continue to be a top priority as the frequency and intensity of these events appear to be increasing, according to groups that track weather-related incidents.[.]”
Other interviewees, such as Alex Stevens of the Institute for Energy Research, aptly noted that “hurricanes have always posed a risk to oil and gas companies due to their potential impact on supply chain logistics, infrastructure and production requirements.”
“Always” is correct, and in fact there is no evidence that hurricanes or other types of extreme weather that affect oil and gas production, as Lawrence said, are becoming more frequent or intense.
The clearest example is that of hurricanes, which pose the most direct and obvious threat to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico each year. From the available historical data, we can deduce that they are not getting worse, no matter what “groups that track weather-related incidents” say.
I suspect the “groups” mentioned are ones like World Weather Attribution, who make their money attributing various weather events to climate change. Their method of determining the truth about weather events is not trustworthy because they start with the assumption that extreme weather events are caused or influenced by climate change, and then work backwards to adjust their models and determine the extent to which climate change has influenced them. We've covered this bad science several times at Climate Realism, such as with the floods in Dubai last spring, the wildfires in Canada last year, and other weather events that have been in the news.
Hurricanes have not become more severe or more frequent—either in the Gulf of Mexico or globally, as Climate Realism has repeatedly pointed out in the past, for example here, here and here, and as the data cited in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes and Climate at a Glance: Global Tropical Cyclones conclusively demonstrate.
The most recent global hurricane count, graphically presented in the figure below by Dr. Ryan Maue, shows no increasing trend since the 1980s. If anything, the hurricane count appears to be declining slightly during this period. (See figure below)
Measurements of the total energy of hurricanes and tropical storms have also shown no increasing trend since records began in the 1970s. There are significant year-to-year fluctuations, but no clear overall trend. (See figure below)
It is simply not true that hurricanes that threaten oil and gas production are becoming more frequent or extreme.
Even extreme heat—another weather condition that can threaten oilfield operations, especially in hot, dry regions like the American Southwest—is not getting more intense, as discussed in “Climate At A Glance: US Heatwaves.”
Even the more life-threatening extreme cold is not becoming more likely.
That's not to say that continuing to improve the weather resilience of oil fields and investing in better weather forecasting and storm tracking technologies wouldn't be a good idea. But it's a good idea no matter which way severe weather trends may go, because one thing is absolutely certain: extreme weather will happen sooner or later and cause disruptions.
Although fortunately no one in the Rigzone article in question claims that weather extremes can be prevented by ending the use of fossil fuels, spreading falsehoods about trends in weather extremes is not helpful.
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