A recent article at Rigzone, “How Dangerous Is Extreme Weather for Oil and Gas Companies In 2024?” repeats the claim that extreme weather events like hurricanes are becoming worse, and therefore pose a major risk to oil and gas operations especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore oil operations are threatened by hurricanes, but this is not new, it poses a threat every hurricane season. As a result, operators should work on improving weather prediction technologies and response plans, to reduce the risk. This is true regardless of climate change, because hurricanes have not, in fact, become more frequent or severe.
The Rigzone article consist primarily of interviews with a few oilfield “experts,” particularly an economist named Frederick J. Lawrence, who first makes the obvious statement that extreme weather can be a risk factor for oil and gas, and that “preparation and faster response will always be needed in addition to improved standards and resilience.”
Lawrence is the one who makes the claim later in the article that “increased preparations for extreme weather events will remain a top priority given what appears to be an increased frequency and intensity of events according to groups that track weather-related incidents[.]”
Others interviewed, like Alex Stevens from the Institute for Energy Research, sensibly said that “hurricanes have always posed risks to oil and gas companies due to their potential impact on supply chain logistics, infrastructure, and extraction demands.”
“Always” is correct, and in fact there is no evidence that hurricanes or other kinds of extreme weather that impact oil and gas operations are becoming, as Lawrence said, more frequent or intense.
Taking hurricanes as the clearest example, since they pose the most direct and obvious threat yearly to oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, we can see from available historical data that they are not becoming worse regardless of what “groups that track weather-related incidents” say.
My suspicion is that these “groups” being referred to are those like the World Weather Attribution, which make their living attributing various weather events to climate change. Theirs is an untrustworthy methodology for finding the truth about weather events, because they begin with the assumption that extreme weather events are caused or influenced by climate change, then work backwards to make their models fit and determine the degree to which climate change impacted it. We’ve covered this bad science several times at Climate Realism, like with the flooding in Dubai this past spring, wildfires in Canada last year, and other weather events that made the news.
Hurricanes have not been getting more severe or frequent- not in the Gulf of Mexico, and not worldwide, as Climate Realism has pointed out repeatedly in the past, here, here, and here, for example, and as has definitively established by data cited in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes and Climate at a Glance: Global Tropical Cyclones.
The most recent global hurricane count, graphed in the figure below by Dr. Ryan Maue, show no increasing trend since the 1980s. If anything, hurricane counts appear to be slightly declining over that period. (See figure below)
The measurement of the overall energy contained in hurricanes and tropical storms has likewise not displayed an increasing trend since records begin in the 1970s. There is significant annual variability, but no clear trend overall. (See figure below)
It is simply not true that hurricanes that threaten oil and gas operations are becoming more frequent or extreme.
Similarly, extreme heat, which is another weather condition that can threaten oilfield work especially in hot and arid regions like the American Southwest, is not becoming more intense either, as discussed in Climate At A Glance: U.S. Heatwaves.
Extreme cold, which is more dangerous to life, is also not becoming more likely.
That is not to say that it is not a good idea to continue to improve oilfield weather resilience and invest in better weather forecasting and storm tracking technology. But this is a good idea regardless of a trend in any direction when it comes to severe weather, because if one thing is absolutely certain it is that extreme weather will strike eventually and it will cause disruptions for operations.
While thankfully no one suggested in the particular Rigzone article that ceasing the use of fossil fuels is how you can prevent extreme weather, it is not helpful to spread falsehoods about trends in weather extremes.
