Oil and gas producers in the US Gulf of Mexico are restarting production shut-in last week by Hurricane Isaias, which came ashore as a Category 2 storm late on 9 October near Destin, Florida.
About 1.17mn b/d of offshore Gulf oil production and 1 Bcf/d of natural gas production were still off line as of noon ET on Sunday, according to the US Marine Minerals Administration, equal to about 57.4pc and 49.1pc of the region's production, respectively. That is down from the 1.5mn b/d of oil and 1.3 Bcf/d of natural gas production off line shortly before the storm made landfall.
BP said on Saturday it was returning personnel to its Na Kika and Thunder Horse platforms to restart operations shut down earlier in the week as the storm passed. The company is also returning non-essential personnel to its Argos, Atlantis and Mad Dog platforms.
Shell on Sunday said there was no storm damage to its Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Vito or Appomattox offshore Gulf facilities, and it was in the process of returning staff to them.
The US Department of Energy on Saturday said it would exchange a combined 4mn bl of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) with ExxonMobil and BP to offset any disruptions in production from the storm. The oil will be repaid to the SPR with additional crude at a later date. The 2mn bls for ExxonMobil are an acceleration of previously awarded SPR crude.
The hurricane-related shut-ins led US Gulf coast crude prices to rise last week against the light sweet benchmark. Louisiana-delivered Mars hit a $3/bl premium over WTI Nymex on 8 October, a $1.60/bl increase since the start of last week and the widest since 17 September. Lighter sour Thunder Horse and Heavy Louisiana Sweet both traded more than $1.50/bl higher.
