After making little more than a dent in natural gas supplies from the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Claudette was downgraded to a tropical storm late Tuesday afternoon and slipped into a tropical depression overnight into Wednesday as it made its way west/northwest toward Mexico. Gulf producers continued to repopulate platforms and rigs in the Western and Central Gulf, but about 2.2 Bcf/d of gas production remained shut in Wednesday, according to the Mineral Management Service (MMS).

From Monday through Wednesday, data from the MMS showed that a total of about 6 Bcf of gas and 840,339 barrels of oil were shut in.

At 10 a.m. CDT Wednesday, Claudette was about 45 miles west-southwest of Del Rio, TX, moving northwest at 25 mph. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its final advisory regarding Claudette that it expects the storm to continue that path for the next 12 to 24 hours. Maximum sustained winds were clocked at 25 mph, with gusts of 37 mph.

In Claudette’s aftermath, the NHC said flash flood watches are in effect for Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Matagorda, Waller and Wharton counties.

The storm caused many oil and natural gas companies to evacuate platforms and shut down production (see Daily GPI, July 14; July 15; July 16). After revising its shut in figures upward on Wednesday for Monday and Tuesday, the MMS found that almost 1.1 Bcf of gas and 221,766 barrels of oil was shut in on Monday. For Tuesday, the MMS reported a total of 287 platforms and 47 rigs were evacuated and 2.697 Bcf of gas and 418,164 barrels of oil was shut in due to the storm. As production slowly returned, Wednesday saw almost 2.2 Bcf and 200,409 barrels shut in.

The MMS said the shut in production from July 11-16 was equivalent to about 0.144% of the total yearly gas production and 0.213% of the total yearly oil production from the Gulf. Total yearly Gulf gas production is 5.1 Tcf, while total yearly Gulf oil production comes in at 584 million barrels.

Despite the shut ins and devastation wrought on land, Claudette’s fury paled in comparison to last fall’s tag-team of Category 4 Lili and Tropical Storm Isidore, which combined over a month’s time to knock out more than 14.4 million bbl of oil and 90 Bcf of gas (see Daily GPI, Oct. 21, 2002).

ChevronTexaco said it continues to remobilize personnel in the Gulf. “More than 90% of our workers are onsite and working to restore production,” the company said Wednesday. “ChevronTexaco currently has approximately 60,000 b/d of oil and 225 MMcf/d of operated gas shut in.”

El Paso had 65 MMcfe shut in on Tuesday and as of Wednesday morning, the company had about 30 MMcfe shut in. “We are continuing to remobilize our platform and we expect that to be completed by the end of the day,” said Aaron Woods, spokesman fro El Paso, adding that the company anticipates having “everything that we had shut in back online by the end of the day.”

Shell said Wednesday afternoon that helicopter flights had resumed Tuesday out of Morgan City, LA. with all personnel expected to be back on facilities by the end of the Wednesday. Production was expected to resume after personnel had been deployed.

A spokeswoman for Kerr-McGee said it had approximately 69,000 boe shut in during Monday and again on Tuesday, but most of that is back online now, while Anadarko said it has only restarted two out of the 15 platforms that were shut in, but hopes to have the rest up sometime Thursday.

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