Hurricane Katrina aims for U.S. Gulf oil patch August 27, 2005 02:17 PM ET
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Crude oil and natural gas producers in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico accelerated evacuations and output stoppages on Saturday after forecasters predicted Hurricane Katrina threatened offshore production.
Shell Oil Co. said it planned to evacuate all 1,019 of its offshore personnel in the central and eastern Gulf by the end of Saturday, shutting 420,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and 1.345 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfd) of natural gas.
Also, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port announced on its Web site that it suspended marine operations midday Saturday. The vital crude gateway still was making pipeline deliveries.
Katrina, which hit Florida's southeast coast on Thursday before moving into the Gulf, packed sustained winds of 115 mph on Saturday and was a Category 3 storm. However, the National Hurricane Center said it could become a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of at least 131 mph, by landfall on Monday.
Originally forecast to make a quick turn north and hit Florida a second time -- missing most of the Gulf oil patch -- Katrina confounded meteorologists by swinging farther westward than anticipated.
Katrina now was expected to come ashore on the central Gulf Coast, romping northward along a line roughly similar to last year's Hurricane Ivan, which caused severe offshore damage. Katrina's powerful center was expected to reach oil fields on Sunday.
Kerr-McGee Corp. evacuated several continental shelf platforms on Saturday, shutting the equivalent of 50,000 barrels per day of crude, spokesman John Christiansen said.
"We'll continue to monitor it and we won't return workers to those facilities until Katrina's gone," he said.
By Saturday's end, Marathon Oil was to have evacuated 36 workers and shut-in 18,500 bpd of crude and 24.9 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd) of natural gas, spokesman Scott Scheffler said.
Anadarko Petroleum began pulling everyone off its Marco Polo platform in the deepwater south of New Orleans, spokeswoman Teresa Wong said. The field was to be shut by sundown, stopping production of around 16,000 bpd of oil equivalent according to recent estimates.
French oil major Total on Friday was the first to report a production interruption, shutting 16,500 bpd of oil and 259 MMcfd of natural gas.
ANOTHER IVAN?
About 25 percent of domestic U.S. production of natural gas and crude oil comes from offshore operations in the Gulf. Offshore production capacity is 1.5 million bpd of crude and 10 (Bcf) per day of natural gas.
Ivan, which packed monstrous waves and undersea currents, seriously damaged 31 platforms and shut more than 10 percent of Gulf production for more than four months.
It came ashore along the Alabama-Florida border. Government forecasters were betting Katrina would strike the United States in southeastern Louisiana, although several computer models had it veering into Mississippi or Alabama.
"Katrina should be a Category 4 hurricane by Saturday night or early Sunday, and could even reach Category 5 intensity," according to Accuweather.com.
Oil futures settled down $1.36 at $66.13 a barrel on Friday at the New York Mercantile Exchange as traders anticipated Katrina would not have a major impact on production.
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