Hurricane Isaias is forecast to miss the oil industry's biggest hubs along the Gulf Coast but could still nudge fuel prices higher if it triggers power outages that shut down refineries for processing crude, according to industry experts.
An extended shutdown of refineries would put a crimp in fuel supplies that already have taken a hit from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Russia's war against Ukraine.
Chevron’s facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Vertex Energy’s refinery in Mobile, Alabama, which constitute 2.4% of the nation’s refining capacity, are at risk of flooding and power outages, said Andrew Lipow, a Houston-based oil analyst. Any problems could take the facilities offline at a time when diesel supplies are already low.
Isaias strengthened into a major hurricane Friday as it barreled toward the Gulf Coast, where final preparations were underway for potentially life-threatening storm surges and high winds.
If the storm moves through quickly and its impacts are minimal, refineries would continue to run at reduced capacity and prices for gasoline and diesel could rise just a few cents, said Carl Larry with the energy analysis firm Enverus. But if refineries such as Chevron's shut down completely, it could take them weeks to recover and that could cause fuel prices to jump more significantly, Larry said.
“Major issues, like a power shutdown, and the prices will spike immediately. It's possible a dollar,” he said. “Those diesel prices that already are above $6 could start approaching $7.”
Other experts said even if the refineries that turn oil into fuel for consumers take a hit, the gas price impacts should be minimal.
“We’re talking about potentially under a million barrels a day, probably somewhere in the ballpark of 500,000 barrels a day, of refining capacity,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “That may have a small impact on gas prices, primarily in the Gulf Coast, but I don’t think it rises to a criteria that would impact gas prices nationally.”
As refineries on the coast braced for the storm, it already had caused temporary shutdowns of offshore oil wells that pump about 15% of U.S. crude.
As of Friday, personnel from 129 production platforms — about a third of the facilities in the Gulf of Mexico — were evacuated, according to the federal Marine Minerals Administration.
More than two-thirds of Gulf oil production was shut down as a precaution, equal to almost 1.5 million barrels (61 million gallons) of oil a day, the agency said. Chevron, BP and Shell were among companies that reported evacuating personnel and shutting platforms.
The storm’s impact on oil and gas prices so far is dwarfed by the effect of the conflict in the Middle East. And once the storm passes, workers will be able to return to platforms in the Gulf and quickly resume operations, barring significant damage.
“I would expect that the shut-in oil production will probably return pretty quickly within just a couple of days,” De Haan said.
Prices for Brent crude, the international standard, were above $104 a barrel Friday. That price has varied between $96 and nearly $110 over the last month driven by uncertainty over the war with Iran.
XYLEM trucks line up in preparation for Isaias on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in downtown Mobile, Ala. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)
An American flag flaps in the wind generated by the effects of Isaias on an empty beach on Friday, Oct. 9, loom overhead on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Mon Louis Island, Ala. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for efforts that the award committee said promoted international law as it comes under attack.
Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the U.N. commission she led on Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Pillay has worked at both.
Hours after the award was announced in Norway, the Trump administration imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal over investigations into the United States and its allies, including Israel.
On the 125th anniversary of the prize's inception, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought "to remind the world that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently. Peace requires justice," committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said.
Judges “guard the thin red line between order and chaos,” and the world needs jurists "of courage, vision and determination, qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.”
In places such as Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa, she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.
Pillay, 85, received the news while attending a forum in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials of Nazi war criminals helped lay the foundations of international law. She was in the same room where the trials were held when the prize was announced.
She said efforts to weaken international criminal justice “endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters.”
Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. “What’s happening there is genocide,” she said to more applause.
The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister "have incited the commission of genocide.” Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations.
Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of antisemitism or turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel. Under her leadership, the commission also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
In an interview with The Associated Press last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014.
Growing up under the harsh system of segregation influenced Pillay's interest in human rights and the law. Starting with Mandela’s presidency, South Africa’s government has openly compared the situation faced by nonwhite people during apartheid to the Palestinians’ plight.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Mandela said soon after apartheid ended.
The Nobel announcement came at another critical time for Gaza, just two days after the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war. Over 74,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with their territory devastated. Saturday marks a year since a fragile ceasefire took effect, while Israeli strikes continue.
Netanyahu wrote on X that the Nobel committee “has lost its moral compass” by awarding its highest honor to "a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”
The award was announced less than three weeks before Israel’s election, in which Netanyahu is fighting to stay in power.
Pillay’s win and the new U.S. sanctions bring renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court, where Pillay was a judge from 2003 to 2008.
In a video address, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would “ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.”
The sanctions block any assets the ICC as an institution has in U.S. jurisdictions and set a six-month timeline for American companies and individuals to wind down any business with the court.
The Nobel Committee did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment following Rubio’s announcement.
Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.
When countries do not have a representative on the court’s permanent, 15-judge panel, they can appoint an expert of their choice. Gambia, which launched the proceedings in 2019, selected Pillay when the country accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority group.
As a young lawyer in apartheid South Africa, part of Pillay’s work involved establishing key rights for political prisoners being held on Robben Island, which included Mandela, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
After apartheid ended, Mandela appointed Pillay to be the country’s first non-white woman to serve as a High Court judge.
Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation.
Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: The Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.
In Trump’s second term, he has been outspoken about his desire for the Nobel, but has expressed doubts that the committee would ever award him the prize.
“They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week, in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.
Dazio reported from Berlin, and Keaten reported from Geneva. Associated Press journalists Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa; Ali Swenson in New York; Cara Anna in Jerusalem; Molly Quell and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; and Mark Lewis in Stavanger, Norway, contributed to this report.
AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes
This story has been corrected to reflect that this is the 125th anniversary of the peace prize’s inception, not the 125th prize.
South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)
South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, sits at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)
South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)
South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)
The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces Navanethem Pillay as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)
FILE - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, answers journalist's questions during a press conference at the Geneva Press Club, in Geneva, Switzerland, July 31, 2014. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem, Feb. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
FILE - Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 18, 2012. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits Al- Daraj Elementary Co-ed UNRWA school in Gaza City, Feb. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)
The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces Navanethem Pillay as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)
FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights South African Navanethem Pillay prior to the 23rd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 27, 2013. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - U.N. human rights chief Navanethem Pillay prior to the opening of a session of the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 18, 2012. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - A Nobel diploma and medal are displayed, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)
