Offshore oil and gas operators in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) were evacuating platforms and rigs in the path of Tropical Storm Ida Sunday and Monday as the storm was expected to make landfall early Tuesday morning. More than 25% each of GOM oil and natural gas production was shut in Monday, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) said.

Based on data from offshore operator reports from 44 companies submitted to MMS as of 11:30 a.m. CST Monday, personnel have been evacuated from 126 production platforms, equivalent to 18.1% of the 694 manned platforms in the GOM. Personnel from eight rigs have also been evacuated. This is equivalent to 12.1% of the 66 rigs currently operating in the GOM.

It is estimated that approximately 29.6% of the oil production and 27.5% of the natural gas production in the GOM has been shut in. Estimated production from the GOM as of March 2009 is 1.3 million b/d of oil and 7 Bcf/d of natural gas.

MMS said it will update the evacuation and shut-in statistics at 1 p.m. CST each day until they are no longer significant.

Monday the National Weather Service (NWS) Hurricane Center discontinued all hurricane watches and warnings along the Gulf Coast related to what was Hurricane Ida, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm. However, a tropical storm warning was in effect from Grand Isle, LA, eastward to the Aucilla River in Florida, NWS said.

At noon CST the center of the storm was about 115 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 220 miles south-southwest of Pensacola, FL, NWS said. The storm was moving north-northwest at about 18 mph. A turn toward the north and then to the north-northeast was expected over the next 24 hours. The center of Ida was expected to make landfall overnight along the northern Gulf Coast and a subsequent turn to the east was expected.

With Ida appearing likely to take only relatively small and temporary bites out of an already well supplied spot gas market, and then to cause some demand destruction after making an expected Tuesday morning landfall in the vicinity of the Mississippi-Alabama border, cash traders took more heed of moderate temperatures dominating the weather outlook and the previous Friday’s 18.7-cent futures drop in pushing a large majority of points lower again Monday.

December natural gas futures in pre-regular session trading on Monday morning had reached a low of $4.473, but a marked rebound occurred before noon to $4.605. After an afternoon sell-off, futures rallied to a $4.690 high before closing out the regular session at $4.670, up 7.5 cents from Friday’s finish.

Similarly, December crude futures ran up from an early morning low of $77.95/bbl to a high of $80.19//bbl before closing at $79.43/bbl, up $2 from Friday’s close.

Monday morning Williams said production loss on its Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) was about 250 MMcf/d. “Transco does not expect that it will be implementing its emergency supply allocation (ESA) process,” the company said. “Shippers are encouraged to verify with their suppliers and adjust their nominations accordingly to minimize any imbalances that may be created.”

El Paso Corp. said late Monday morning its Tennessee Gas Pipeline system had lost about 800 MMcf/d of throughput due to Ida, while affiliate Southern Natural Gas reported a reduction of 240 MMcf/d.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency in his state on Sunday in anticipation of the storm’s impact.

Shell said due to third-party downstream operations decisions, Shell operated production for a part of the company’s East operations will be impacted starting Monday, November 9.

“Shell safely evacuated about 160 people over the weekend who were not essential to producing and drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico,” the company said Monday. “At present, we are not planning any additional significant personnel movements until Ida has moved through the northern Gulf. We have secured drilling operations on several platforms and deep water mobile drilling units under contract to Shell in our East operations area.”

“We have secured drilling operations on several platforms and deep water mobile drilling units under contract to Shell in our East operations area. There is no impact on Shell operated GOM production at this time.”

Enterprise Products Partners said Monday the deepwater Independence Hub was shut in, curtailing about 700 MMcf/d, as a precaution for the heavy weather.

Also on Sunday, Chevron Corp. said it had begun to evacuate some GOM personnel and some production had been shut in. Marathon Oil Corp. reported shutting in about 10.5 MMcf/d of gas and 11,700 b/d of oil production. BP Plc said some production had been shut in and some personnel evacuated.

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