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Michael update: Interstate 10 is open; Georgia crops are hard-hit

Recent developments in the post-Michael cleanup:

  • Two days after Hurricane Michael roared ashore in Florida, there is good news for truckers. Interstate 10 is completely open in Florida, according to this report and a tweet from Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

  • There has been significant damage to Georgia crops, possibly setting up a downturn in trucking demand for agricultural products. Given that little of it had been  harvested, the timing of the storm is being seen as the “worst possible time” for farmers. This news report refers to it as “total devastation.”

  • A spur of the Colonial Pipeline has been closed. Line 17, which moves products into terminals in the Georgia cities of Americus, Albany and Bainbridge, is closed. But the main spur, which takes oil products from the Gulf of Mexico through the southeast and mid-Atlantic, was not affected by the storm.

  • Power outages are being rapidly repaired in Florida and Georgia, according to poweroutage.us. The number of outages in Florida was less than 300,000 at approximately 7:30 a.m. this morning. In Georgia, it was about 170,000. Those are both down significantly from the levels of the prior day, when they were above 200,000 in Georgia and 300,000 in Florida. But both Virginia and North Carolina are straddling 500,000 outages.

John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.