While another shutdown of Central Gulf production is possible by the weekend given the projected path of Tropical Storm Wilma, producers made relatively substantial gains restoring supply over this past weekend. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) said that 149 MMcf/d of shut-in offshore production was restored since Friday, and consulting firm Bentek Energy said scheduled gas flows Monday on regional pipelines indicate onshore and offshore production rose about 414 MMcf/d.

MMS said offshore production shut-ins totaled 5,497.96 MMcf/d of gas and 996,291 bbl/d of oil on Monday, which was down from 5,647 MMcf/d of gas and more than 1 million bbl/d of oil on Friday and a peak post-Hurricane Rita of 8,623 MMcf/d of gas and 1.564 million bbl/d of oil (Sept. 26). A total of 225 platforms and two rigs remain evacuated. Since Hurricane Katrina forced evacuations on Aug. 26, an average of about 5.88 Bcf/d of gas has been shut in. The MMS said cumulative offshore shuts-ins since Aug. 26 now total 305.521 Bcf of gas and 60.65 million bbl of oil.

Golden, CO-based Bentek Energy said Monday that Stingray Pipeline came back into service and Southern Natural finally is showing some progress. Bentek said total onshore and offshore gas production shut-ins Monday fell to 5,489 MMcf/d, which is only slightly more than the MMS data for the offshore. On Friday Bentek said 5,903 MMcf/d of onshore and offshore production was shut in. Cumulative onshore and offshore shut-ins now total 321.5 Bcf, it said.

Bentek’s data represent scheduled gas nominations collected from pipeline company bulletin boards. Actually gas flows may vary from what was scheduled, and not all of the gas production onshore and offshore is captured by the Bentek survey because some production goes directly into smaller intrastate pipeline systems that are not among the pipelines surveyed. Nevertheless, the data provide a view of both onshore and offshore flows that is more comprehensive than, and remains relatively consistent with, the MMS data.

Bentek said Monday that a total of 8,332 MMcf/d of gas production was scheduled to flow on the region’s pipeline systems compared to 13,820 MMcf/d on Aug. 26. A total of nearly 5 Bcf/d is finally flowing onshore and offshore Louisiana. Bentek reported that 141 MMcf/d was scheduled on Southern Monday, which was up nearly 100 MMcf/d from Friday. Stingray volumes had been at zero Friday but 117 MMcf/d was scheduled Monday. Mississippi Canyon remains the only major pipeline that’s still not receiving any gas production.

However, there’s still 1.7 Bcf/d shut in upstream of Tennessee Gas, 729 MMcf/d shut in upstream of Southern and 547 MMcf/d shut in on Transco, according to Bentek.

Furthermore, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) currently projects that yet another tropical storm will head right up the center of the Gulf of Mexico, forcing offshore producers to evacuate by as early as next weekend. NHC forecasts note that current route predictions are being made with a high degree of uncertainty, but as of the 11 a.m. report Monday, Tropical Storm Wilma was expected to strengthen and end up just north of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the southern Gulf by 8 a.m. CDT on Saturday and head north toward New Orleans.

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