Ida: The Hurricaneless Hurricane (OIH, USO, OIL, MUR, MRO, RDS, CVX, XOM)

Oil and gas companies have closed or winding down many US Gulf operations ahead of a very late in the year Hurricane Ida.  The weekend reports had this one dissipating then the reports early this morning had this making landfall as a tropical storm with [a possibility of it being hurricane.  This morning Ida became a tropical storm again at the National Hurricane Center.  In order to not have to out-guess ahead of time which companies will be least or most impacted had this been a full hurricane at the time it met rigs and the coast, we looked at the Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH), the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) reactions based upon the supply data.  While the infrastructure is now not as likely to be hit as hard and while a tropical storm is far less of a threat than a hurricane, NYMEX WTI Crude is actually still up $1.78 at $79.21 as of 10:13 AM EST.

Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH) is up 3% at $124.53, the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF is up 2.1% at $40.53 and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) is up 2.15% at $26.80.

We have already seen a note come out of Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE: MUR) that it has shut its Thunder Hawk and Medusa platforms due to the storm.  Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE: MRO) shut its Ewing Bank platform and gulf production ahead of the storm.  Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS) and Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) had shut production and evacuated staff, and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) was preparing to evacuate staff in or near the hurricane (ergo tropical storm) path.  There are other oil and gas companies with notes out on the issue as well, but you can bet that whether this is a tropical storm or if it becomes a hurricane again that there will be announcements from companies throughout the morning.

Jon C. Ogg
November 9, 2009