US Gulf facilities shut as storm approaches: Update 2

Updates with latest on shut-ins, port conditions.

Oil and gas companies operating in the US Gulf of Mexico are removing personnel and shutting in facilities as a major hurricane is set to strike the eastern Gulf coast later this week.

Hurricane Michael, currently passing near the western tip of Cuba, is expected to make landfall 10 October near the Florida panhandle, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In all 324,000 b/d of oil output, representing 19pc of the total from the US Gulf, and 284mn cf/d of natural gas, or 11pc of the total, have been shut-in as of today, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said in its first update on Michael. Personnel have been evacuated from 10 platforms, or 1.5pc of the 687 manned platforms in the region.

BP has shut in its four operated platforms — Atlantis, Mad Dog, Na Kika and Thunder Horse — and is in the process of evacuating personnel from the facilities localed in the deepwater off the Louisiana coast. BP's US offshore Gulf output is about 304,000 b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d).

Chevron has shut in two facilities — Blind Faith and Petronius — and evacuated all personnel from them. Both are southeast of New Orleans.

ExxonMobil will have minimal staffing at its Mobile Bay operations. The major is evacuating personnel from its offshore Lena platform, which is getting decommissioned. There is no current impact on production, it says.

Shell says no evacuations are planned at its facilities at this time. Its assets remain operational as the storm is currently projected to pass to the east of the company's assets.

The specter of production shut-ins helped support the Nymex WTI oil benchmark above $74/bl today.

Michael appears to be on a track to miss many US Gulf coast offshore production sites. It could hit refined product pipelines and terminals hit last month by Hurricane Florence. The storm could also disrupt shipping into Tampa, Florida, and other Gulf coast ports.

Maximum sustained winds are near 75 mph (120 km/h) with higher gusts, the hurricane center says. The system is expected to see steady-to-rapid strengthening in the next day, and is forecast to become a major hurricane by tomorrow.

The Coast Guard has set port condition X-Ray for the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, and the ports of Gulfport and Pascagoula in Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama. That condition means vessel traffic and transfer operations may continue for now, but all ships over 500 gross tons should make plans for departing the port.