The aftershocks of Hurricane Ida kept a lid on petroleum output and demand last week, long after the storm hammered Louisiana and production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) on Aug. 29, the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) inventory report showed.

For the week ended Sept. 10, production inched ahead to 10.1 million b/d from 10.0 million b/d the week before, according to EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report. Output had plummeted in the week ended Sept. 3, dropping from 11.5 million b/d pre-Ida. The storm knocked offline more than three-fourths of oil output in the GOM, with the recovery still ongoing.

Prior to Ida, output was already more than 1.0 million b/d below the 2020 peak reached last March before the coronavirus pandemic.

Ida’s impact...