Oil companies on Tuesday rushed teams to the Gulf of Mexico to assess the damage Hurricane Katrina may have caused to their rigs, platforms and refineries.
More than 90 percent of the Gulf’s oil output was shut as a precaution, removing nearly a quarter of total U.S. production.
With oil prices rapidly rising to unprecedented territory, the industry hopes to get its operations up and running as quickly as possible.
“There’s going to be a lot more damage offshore than there will be to the refineries,” said Peter Beutel, president of trading consultant Cameron Hanover. “But in this age, losing even one refinery would be worse than losing a production facility.”
Royal Dutch Shell said an aerial inspection of its Mars platform, which produces around 147,000 barrels of oil and 157 million cubic feet of gas per day, showed some damage to its upper deck.
A BP spokeswoman said on Tuesday that BP staff had not observed any damage to its Mad Dog, Holstein, Nakika, Marlin and Horn Mountain platforms.
An oil drilling platform broke free of its mooring in Mobile Bay, Alabama, and slammed into a bridge because of high winds from the hurricane, the Alabama Department of Transportation said. It was not yet clear which company owned the facility.
BP said initial indications showed that the hurricane caused little damage to its operations, including its massive $1 billion Thunder Horse platform.
Chevron Corp. said it planned to conduct fly-overs at its production facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi. However, the company was uncertain whether it had enough fuel for its aircraft, which had to be moved to East Texas from Louisiana.
Restarting production
Kerr McGee resumed oil and natural gas production in the western U.S. Gulf after its facilities survived the brunt of the storm, a company official said.
“We are ramping-up production in the western Gulf and will be flying out later today to assess the situation in the eastern Gulf,” said spokesman John Christiansen.
Two deepwater production facilities, Nansen and Boomvang, resumed operations in the western Gulf, and Red Hawk may restart later Tuesday, the company said.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said they started post-storm damage assessments of their offshore installations.
“If the platforms are sound, then we will restart our production,” said Exxon spokeswoman Susan Reeves.
Apache Corp. said it hoped to resume operations at some platforms by the end of the day if pipelines were not damaged.
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port said initial damage reports were encouraging and hoped to begin crude shipments on Thursday.
Marathon Oil said its early assessments of its offshore operations showed no damage.
“We’ve gotten early reports that our installations in the South Pass are still in place. We’re still waiting to hear on Ewing Pass,” said spokesman Scott Scheffler.
Marathon had also gotten early reports that its 245,000 barrel per day Garyville, Louisiana, refinery had sustained no major damage. “We’re still not sure about a restart time,” he said.
