Oil and gas production platforms continued to come back on line over the weekend as crews returned to offshore sites that had been evacuated as Tropical Storm Don came into the region late last week.
*update*
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement reported about 2.3 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production (31,964 barrels) and .9 percent of the natural production (46 MM cubic feet per day) remained shut-in on Monday.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement reported about 6 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production (84,000 barrels) and 3.5 percent of the natural production (186 MM cubic feet per day) remained shut-in on Sunday.
That’s an improvement over the peak storm-related outages of 11.9 percent of the oil production 6.2 percent of the natural gas production reported on Friday.
Evacuating personnel and shutting in production when significant storms approach offshore platforms is a standard operating procedure in the Gulf of Mexico. Companies will typically close safety valves located below the surface of the ocean floor to prevent oil or gas releases should surface equipment be damaged.
Tropical Storm Don veered to the south and hit the Western-most parts of the Gulf late last week where there’s relatively few oil and gas production platforms. Companies such as BP and ExxonMobil began moving workers back to the platforms on Friday morning when it became clear the storm was going to come ashore south of Corpus Christi. Anadarko said Saturday it remanned all of the platforms it had evacuated, while Chevron said the production it had taken offline was back on.
The Gulf accounts for 29 percent of U.S. oil production and 13 percent of natural gas output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Hard to believe this wimpy little storm caused so much trouble.