Category 5 Cyclone Aimed at Strait of Hormuz
Like all weather phenomena, hurricanes and cyclones are notoriously fickle, so there is (thankfully) no guarantee Gonu will enter the Persian Gulf, much less wreck it. But there are two facilities that bear specific mention: the Ras Tanura and Ras al-Juaymah oil loading platforms in Saudi Arabia. So far, the chances of either of these facilities suffering a direct hit are very slim -- Gonu is still 750 miles away from those export points -- but they collectively pump nearly 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude. These facilities, while critical to global energy supplies and -- due to their size -- largely immune to terrorist attacks, are not particularly hurricane resistant. After all, they were built in an area where such storms are almost unheard of. Other (hardly insignificant) energy installations dot the region in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- most of them on the west coast. Luckily, there is little offshore production in the Persian Gulf -- unlike in the Gulf of Mexico -- so there is unlikely to be much permanent damage to the oil production facilities themselves.
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