Xinhua Financial News 8/30/2005
URL:
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=24832
Oil companies, with 90% of their Gulf of Mexico output still shuttered a day after Hurricane Katrina clobbered the region, scrambled Tuesday to size up just how hard the powerful storm hit offshore rigs and onshore refineries.
The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 25% of the nation's energy production, while refineries hit by the storm account for nearly 10% of the nation's refining capacity.
At least five big Gulf Coast refineries also remained shut, as was the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP -- the nation's only deepwater oil terminal.
The LOOP typically receives tankers delivering about 1 million barrels of crude oil a day, or 10% of the nation's imported crude.
The outages and uncertainty over how long they might last drove crude and gasoline futures to record highs Tuesday in New York.
Oil companies said poor communications and extensive power outages were hampering their efforts to assess the damage.
"Communications are very sparse," said Chevron Corp. spokesman Mickey Driver, speaking from the company's Houston office.
"Cell phones don't work; land lines don't work. We're using the communication that we have to ensure the safety of our workforce and employees."
Driver added that Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company, was conducting aerial assessments of its facilities Tuesday, but that it would not have a full picture of storm damage to its operations until Wednesday.
Chevron evacuated 2,100 offshore workers from rigs and closed its 700-employee office in New Orleans ahead of the storm. The company also shut its 325,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Pascagoula, Miss. The plant, one of the biggest on the Gulf Coast, remained down Tuesday.
"We're doing a flyover today of that facility. We don't know whether we'll be able to have people on the ground there today," Driver said. He declined to discuss how much of the company's oil and gas production had been shut by the storm.
Shell Oil, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and one of the Gulf's biggest operators, said all of its Gulf of Mexico oil and gas output remained shuttered Tuesday in the wake of the storm.
A spokeswoman said the company had been pumping about 300,000 barrels of oil a day and 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas prior to the storm.
Ports remain shut
The U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday that all ports on the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge, La., to the Gulf of Mexico remain shut to ship traffic following Hurricane Katrina. Ports along the Intercoastal Waterway from New Orleans to Panama City, Fla., also were down a day after the storm ripped through.
"We're well aware of the need to assess the waterways and get them open. But it's impossible to give a timeline on when that might happen. Right now, search and rescue are our top priorities, and they're taking almost all of our resources," said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Rob Wyman.
The vast dock and storage facilities along the lower Mississippi handle more cargo by volume than any other port in the United States.
Other key ports along the Gulf Coast still shut by the storm include Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., among the hardest-hit by the storm.
Meanwhile, offshore-drilling contractors reported several semisubmersible rigs broke their moorings during the storm and were adrift in the Gulf, adding to flotsam of navigational hazards clogging the sea lanes off Louisiana and Mississippi.
Among rigs adrift were the Deepwater Nautilus, belonging to Transocean Inc. and Offshore Drilling Inc.'s Ocean Voyager.
Offshore Drilling also said its aircraft so far had not found one of its jack-up rigs, the Ocean Warwick. Jack-up rigs, unlike semisubmersibles, rest on legs extended to the seabed when drilling a well.
None of the missing rigs is a production facility.
The roundtrip mileage is around 3000 mi. as we will be meandering on the way there and back. So, the Saturn Vue we'll be driving gets 25 mpg highway, that means we'll need about 120 gallons of regular unleaded for the trip. If prices go up to $3.50 per gallon, that's only $420. Still cheaper than airfare and car rental. Even if prices go up to $5 a gallon, we would still go. My only concern has been availability due to rationing. If they're tapping into the NPR, then it sounds like we're good, for a little while anyway.