U.S. hurricane forecasters urge safety on oil stockpiles

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Forecasters urged the oil industry this summer to stockpile supplies away from the U.S. Gulf Coast, which they predict will be hit by hurricane-force winds, potentially sending sky-high gas prices even higher, according to hazard models released on Wednesday.

"It is almost certain there is going to be significant production disruption in the Gulf of Mexico this year. That's not good," said storm tracker Chuck Watson.

"We're really urging the oil industry to keep the stocks outside the Southeast as high as you can because otherwise you risk disrupting the whole country if there is a storm impact."

Energy companies struggled for months to restore operations after hurricanes pummeled oil and natural gas platforms and shut coastal refineries in the Gulf of Mexico 2005.

U.S. gasoline prices are already at record levels this year and the six-month hurricane season will start on June 1.

Much of the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines face "substantially higher than normal risks" for a hurricane strike in 2007 as a result of continuing warm ocean temperatures and expected La Nina conditions, Watson and fellow storm tracker Mark Johnson said in their forecast.

Watson, founder of Kinetic Analysis Corp. of Silver Spring, Maryland, and Johnson, statistics professor at the University of Central Florida, collaborate on hazard forecasting for Florida, Caribbean nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their data is at hurricane.methaz.org/.

Of 852 coastal counties included in their analysis, they said Carteret County in North Carolina has the highest probability of getting hit with hurricane-force winds in 2007 at 22.4 percent.

Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish followed in second place at 21.2 percent, while Florida's Atlantic coastal St. Lucie and Martin counties were in third and fourth place. Charleston County, South Carolina, and Indian River County, Florida, tied for fifth.

Sixty one U.S. counties had a 15 percent or greater chance of getting hit with hurricane force winds of 74 mph (119 kph) or more this year, compared with only six counties in an average year.

Watson said the warm ocean temperatures and La Nina effects that are driving increased hurricane activity are parts of weather cycles as old as the last Ice Age.

But the increased intensity and duration of individual storms in recent years may be influenced by global warming, a theory that he said should be resolved within three to four years with current modeling techniques.

La Nina, which means "little girl" in Spanish, is a cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific and is associated with wind patterns that allow hurricanes to flourish in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

El Nino, or "little boy," has the opposite effect and tends to discourage hurricane formation in the Atlantic-Caribbean region.