ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF MULTIPLE DISASTERS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

摘要

With the recent exploration/discovery of deep-water reservoirs and continued developments of drilling and production, it remains very important to have a comprehensive and quantitative risk assessment of the drilling/production processes including effective response to deal with such disasters. What measures must be taken to recover from the disaster scenario of a hurricane impacting the same region in the aftermath of an oil spill? The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest marine oil spill in history, was caused by an explosion on a semi-submersible drilling rig about 50 miles southeast of the Mississippi River delta on April 20, 2010. Catastrophic events such as oil spills have enormous impact for the local economy of the area and even for the local labor markets. Another regional disaster, Hurricane Katrina impacted Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, as it ripped over the core of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) producing zone, one of the important oil and gas production areas of the world in 2005. Also, if a catastrophic disaster occurs and the emergency response supply chain is not adequately prepared, then the economic consequences of such event can be huge. Whenever a disaster happens, another reaction to this event that should be considered is resiliency. It is the ability to reduce or remove potential losses due to disaster events. The impact of different shocks on various aspects of a state's economic performance is estimated using a Vector Autoregressive model (VAR). In this study, the dynamic response of a variety of industrial sectors in Louisiana to each of these disasters is considered. The responses of different impulses in this model are shown to demonstrate the interdependence of various time series data.