The amount of gas production flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico rose 617.83 MMcf/d on Friday from the previous day’s level, the Minerals Management Service reported. However, MMS said 7,248.2 MMcf/d of gas remains shut in, based on reports from 69 companies. A total of 328 platforms and 53 rigs are still evacuated.

As of Friday a total of 41 platforms in the Gulf were lost, but “all of them were small and in shallow water. They were not producing very much,” an American Petroleum Institute spokesman said. Nine additional platforms were damaged. Of the rig fleet, three were lost; there were three with extensive damage; and five were adrift.

Based on MMS statistics, on Friday producers remanned 95 more platforms and 11 additional rigs that had been evacuated. The agency calculated that about 40% of the platforms and rigs in the Gulf remained evacuated on Friday.

The amount of oil production still shut in totaled 1,327,953 bbl, a recovery of only about 28,545 bbl from a day earlier. But cumulative oil shut ins as of Friday stood at 8.76 million bbl, and cumulative natural gas shut ins stood at 49.04 Bcf.

Shut ins from Katrina already are approaching 30% of what Ivan caused last winter. The following is the recent history of the impact of hurricanes on Gulf of Mexico natural gas production:

Production receipts into Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico pipelines on Friday indicated a small gas supply recovery was taking place, with scheduled gas flows up only about 336 MMcf/d from a day earlier to 4,549 MMcf/d on 19 major gas pipeline systems, according to a survey of pipeline bulletin boards by Bentek Energy. Based on volumes that were scheduled to flow on those pipelines on Aug. 26, there still was about 6,104 MMcf/d of gas production shut in Friday morning.

One of the more significant increases in scheduled flows was on the offshore Garden Banks system, where production receipts rose to 295 MMcf/d Friday (schedule during the evening cycle on Thursday) from zero scheduled flows on Wednesday and 172 MMcf/d on Thursday. However, there still was zero scheduled receipts from production locations on Destin Pipeline, Mississippi Canyon, Stingray, Nautilus, Chandeleur and Gulfstream Pipeline, compared to 1.8 Bcf/d last Friday.

Among the pipelines posting the largest daily increases in scheduled flows was Tennessee Gas with a rise of 104 MMcf/d to 568 MMcf/d. However, Tennessee still had 1,379 MMcf/d shut in behind its system on Friday. About 860 MMcf/d remained shut in upstream of Southern Natural and about 700 MMcf/d was shut in on Transco, Bentek said.

Bentek’s estimates are based on pipeline Intraday 2 nomination cycles for all days expect the current day, which are based on the previous evening’s nomination cycle. Each day Bentek revises the data for the previous day based on new information from the pipeline companies. Over the last three days, revisions in the last nomination cycle have increased the data on scheduled flows by between 450 MMcf/d and 650 MMcf/d, showing the growth of production flows out of the Gulf. For more on Bentek Energy, go to https://www.bentekenergy.com/.

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