Four days after the rampaging Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana Coast the natural gas industry was beginning to get some idea of the extent of the damage to onshore facilities — some of which were still under water — and offshore rigs, platforms and pipelines, some damaged and some missing in action. But, Gulf-based companies had located most of their employees, Chevron was setting up a tent city for homeless workers, and production was starting to edge up.

As of Friday a total of 41 platforms 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.

And as for lost homes and people, Chevron said it planned to open a tent city within a few miles of its Pascagoula, MS Refinery by Saturday to provide enough beds for up to 1,500 refinery employees and their families whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged by Katrina. Like a massive mobile hotel, Chevron’s tent city will provide full services, including water, catering, power, satellite communications, sewage treatment, medical services, bedding and laundry.

“The demand is great,” Chevron said in a statement. It estimated that between 15-25% of its Pascagoula employees, or about 250 people, lost everything to Katrina. An additional and significant number of employees’ homes have been seriously damaged. Chevron plans to run the camp as long as it’s needed.

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 (MMS) reported. However, MMS said 7,248.2 MMcf/d of gas remains shut in, based on reports from 69 companies. That is down from a mid-week total of 8.8 Bcf/d, or more than 80% of Gulf production, shut in. As of Friday, cumulative natural gas shut ins stood at 49.04 Bcf. A total of 328 platforms and 53 rigs are still evacuated.

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.

Among the pipelines. Enbridge’s Mississippi Canyon Pipeline in the deepwater area directly in Katrina’s path sustained damage, the company said. The extent of the damage will not be known until there can be an underwater survey. Shell’s Mars platform, which had been producing about 150 MMcf/d into Mississippi Canyon before the storm, also was damaged and out of action.

Enbridge’s other pipelines in the area were picking up steam however. B.K (before Katrina) the Enbridge Gulf Offshore System was moving an average of 3 Bcf/d, or about half of total deepwater production.

“The Garden Banks and Manta Ray systems are currently flowing volumes at 150 MMcf/d and are expected to increase over the next several days,” the company said on Thursday. “Start-up of the Stingray and Green Canyon facilities is dependent on resumption of offshore production and onshore interconnecting receipt systems provided that no damage is identified during start-up.” Garden Banks was expected to flow about 295 MMcf/d on Friday compared to nearly double that a week earlier.

Enbridge said Destin Pipeline, which it owns with BP, was only partially operational on Friday. It was receiving no production, according to receipt point data from Bentek Energy. The company said its initial focus was on the welfare and security of its employees, and it had located all but about a dozen of them.

El Paso Corp. reported minimal damage to the facilities on ANR pipeline and isolated damage to facilities on Tennessee Gas Pipeline and Southern Natural Gas (SNG). “Limited resources and challenging logistics are hampering efforts to access and fully inspect offshore pipeline facilities at this early stage,” the company said.

El Paso reported about 1,650 MMcf/d of gas production shut in behind its three Gulf Coast pipeline systems: Southern Natural (550 MMcf/d), Tennessee Gas (700 MMcf/d) and ANR (400 MMcf/d). About 3 Bcf/d was initially shut-in upstream of those systems. On Tennessee, the Bay Saint Louis compressor station in Mississippi and the Leeville and Port Sulphur stations in Louisiana sustained water damage as have the Toca and Olga stations on Southern Natural, El Paso said.

Tennessee, which operates the east leg and header sections of the Blue Water Gathering System, said 150 MMcf/d of production was able to enter the header and flow to the west on Thursday. “The timing of additional volumes becoming available is difficult to predict given the uncertainty of potential repairs on [Tennessee] and because producers are still evaluating their platforms upstream of El Paso’s pipelines,” the company said.

Williams said the Transco and Gulfstream pipelines sustained no major damage but some compression had switched over to running on natural gas rather than utility provided electricity. Spokesman Chris Stockton said about 500 MMcf/d of production was still shut in upstream of Transco and he said Gulfstream was flowing about 500 MMcf/d.

Southern Union, which owns Florida Gas Transmission, Trunkline Pipeline, Trunkline LNG in Lake Charles, LA, and Sea Robin Pipeline, said initial inspections revealed no major damage. However, it expected to complete a more thorough assessment of Trunkline’s offshore operations over the weekend. “Employees working in the coastal area have been accounted for and disaster recovery crews have been deployed to assist with clean up efforts,” the company said.

Florida Gas Transmission was flowing about 1.7 Bcf into the Florida market area on Friday, according to Southern Union. Sea Robin’s throughput for Friday was 356 MMcf. Trunkline was flowing about 835 MMcf Friday and Trunkline LNG’s volume was 240 MMcf.

CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin said Friday that Katrina’s “full impact” may not be understood for quite a while. Even after confronting the “human tragedy” of the devastating storm, Yergin said, the consequences will “force us to think more expansively about energy security.”

The United States will have to “focus harder” on building new infrastructure and investing in the energy sector. If the losses are as huge as some fear, Yergin said the United States could be in for one of the biggest “energy shocks” since the 1970s.

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 surveys of the pipeline bulletin boards. For more on Bentek Energy, go to https://www.bentekenergy.com/.

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