Energy producers and power companies Tuesday began to consider the monstrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but power outages, rising water and oilfield service problems hampered any hope for quick assessments. The power outages could last up to a month or longer, and oil and natural gas companies warn it may take days, and perhaps weeks, to realize the full impact of the mighty storm.

Bill Chiles, head of Offshore Logistics, a helicopter company that ferries employees to the offshore, called his helicopter base, located in Venice, LA, “a total loss, and I mean total. Water is still eight-to-10 feet deep everywhere. The road is gone, many houses are gone, big boats are overturned on the levy and everywhere.

“The PHI [Petroleum Helicopters Inc.] base is submerged and ruined. Our base is gone. Water is over the operation building still…the trailers are gone, the hangar door is gone…fuel tanks are floating and appear to be leaking some fuel. Some big towers at the north end of the base will no longer be a landing hazard…they are gone.”

Louisiana’s Port Fourchon, which serves the oilfield services industry, suffered “considerable damage” and remains closed, Port Director Ted Falgout said, according to Dow Jones.

A major concern, said Falgout, is whether Katrina caused silt buildups in the port area, which could make the area too shallow for oil servicing ships to use the facility. If oil service vessels can’t get out of Port Fourchon to oil fields to turn output back on, there could be “a very large impact to the energy supply,” he said. An alternative port in Venice, LA, “”was harder hit than we were,” and Falgout said the outlook for the energy sector is “very iffy.”

Bruce Jefferis, managing director of risk manager Aon Corp.’s Natural Resources practice group, said Tuesday that it’s too early to know the extent of damage to all of the Gulf-based facilities, nor the long-term impact on oil and gas distribution.

Jefferis says the oil and gas companies learned some lessons from Hurricane Ivan. That storm caused serious damage to the nation’s oil infrastructure in the Gulf, and he suspects that some of the repairs are still ongoing from last year. One issue that arose after last year’s storm was how dependent some oil companies were on pipeline systems owned by others.

“There was probably an under-appreciation of the degree of dependency many of these companies had on people downstream in the chain,” Jefferis said. “If the pipeline you depend on to transport your product is owned by another company, you’re dependent upon that company to maintain it, and after storms like Ivan and Katrina, repair it.” If a pipeline sustains damage, Jefferis said, production remains suspended until repairs are made. “There’s no use producing the oil and gas if you can’t ship it.”

The U.S. Coast Guard reported that seven rigs were adrift in the Gulf, including two that were reported on Monday. One rig was Noble Corp.’s Jim Thompson, while the other was Transocean Inc.’s Deepwater Nautilus.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, the largest deepwater producer in the Gulf of Mexico, said its offshore Mars platform sustained damage during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, but the extent of the damage was unknown. The Mars platform has a production capacity of 220,000 bbl/d of oil and 220 MMcf/d of natural gas.

On its website, the London-based major said, “An early report indicates Shell’s Mars platform has sustained topside damage. We will make further assessments as soon as possible.”

Chevron Corp., which has extensive operations in the Gulf, planned to conduct flyovers at its production facilities on Tuesday. However, the producer was uncertain whether it had enough fuel for its aircraft, which were moved to Texas from Louisiana over the weekend. Power outages also were causing problems for the major.

Chevron spokesman Mickey Driver in Houston said, “cell phones don’t work and land lines don’t work. Communications are very sparse.” Chevron did not expect to have a full assessment of the offshore damage before Wednesday, Driver said. The company had evacuated about 700 New Orleans employees and 2,100 offshore employees ahead of the storm.

Meanwhile, BP plc said that a flyover of many of its rigs had detected no problems. Rigs checked by BP included Thunder Horse, Mad Dog, Na Kika, Holstein, Marlin and Horn Mountain. BP began to move a few employees to some of its platforms, and they will restart generators and inspect the facilities for damage before they are ramped up again.

BP spokesman Hugh Depland said no damage was discovered in the flyovers, “but we’ll know more when we get the folks on board to complete their more detailed onboard inspections.” BP so far has found a mobile drilling rig that was adrift and next to its offshore Holstein platform.

Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) upped its totals Tuesday, saying about 88% of the natural gas production, or 8.798 Bcf/d, and 95% of the oil production, or 1.43 million bbl/d, have been shut in. The fall-off in oil and gas production was more devastating than that reported Monday by the federal agency — 8.29 Bcf/d of gas and 1.375 million bbl/d of oil shut in.

The cumulative drop in natural gas production since Friday has been a whopping 25.44 Bcf, while the total decrease in oil production has been 4.64 million barrels over the four-day period, according to MMS.

Bentek Energy had slightly different tallies for Monday shut-ins. Denver-based Bentek said Katrina knocked out about 8.1 Bcf/d of natural gas production onshore and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday compared to Friday’s gas flows on major pipelines in the region. Gas flows on 19 major pipeline systems fell to only 4.310 Bcf/d from the 12.389 Bcf/d that was being produced on Friday.

From Friday to Monday, about 14.8 Bcf of gas production was shut in, and Bentek said gas flows indicate that at least some of that lost production was made up by withdrawals from gas storage fields.

Apache Corp. and El Paso Corp. both hoped to assess their offshore facilities on Tuesday. ExxonMobil Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. also have started damage assessments of their installations offshore. Exxon spokeswoman Susan Reeves said that if the platforms were sound, “then we will restart our production.”

Two of Kerr-McGee’s deepwater production facilities, Nansen and Boomvang, resumed operations in the western Gulf, and its Red Hawk facility may restart later Tuesday. Another crew will be taking a look at its Neptune deepwater facility and two shelf operations, Main Pass and Breton Sound as soon as it is feasible, a spokesman said.

Dallas-based Ensco International Inc. confirmed Tuesday that the towline parted on its deepwater semisubmersible rig, Ensco 7500, while the rig was under tow away from the path of Katrina early Sunday morning. Because of deteriorating weather conditions, the towline could not be reconnected and the rig was evacuated prior to suspension of helicopter service in advance of the storm. All personnel on board were safely transported to shore.

Ensco 7500 had been engaged in drilling activity in Green Canyon 652 and the well was secured prior to initiation of hurricane response procedures. The rig had been located approximately 120 miles south of the Louisiana coast and initial reports did not disclose any apparent rig damage. The rig is accompanied by the service vessel Warhorse, and preparations are being made to re-man the unit later on Tuesday.

Noble reported that its semisubmersible was in the main path of Katrina, and the unit broke away from its mooring lines and moved 17 miles north-northeast from its original location. A Noble assessment team conducted a flyover of the unit and of the other Noble rigs operating in the Gulf in the general pathway, and based on the visual observations, most of the units do not appear to have sustained damage of a material nature.

ATP Oil & Gas Corp., based in Houston, reported that its offshore rig Ocean Voyager at Mississippi Canyon 711, was disconnected from two ATP wells during the storm. The rig, operated by Diamond Offshore, reboarded the Ocean Voyager Tuesday to secure the unit and to further assess its condition.

Houston-based Newfield Exploration Co. reported that its “A” production platform at Main Pass 138 “appears to have been lost in the storm.” All other Newfield operated structures flown over appear to be intact. Boats and helicopters were mobilizing Tuesday to better access damages, identify any environmental impacts and begin the repair process. Diamond Offshore also reported that one rig appeared to be lost while another one was adrift and was being secured.

New Orleans-based Entergy on Tuesday began the process of assessing the “extraordinary damage” to its electrical system in Louisiana and Mississippi, which company officials called the “worst” in its history. Company officials said crews could take several days to fully assess the damage, and it expects a long and difficult restoration process — several weeks at least — to repair its damaged electrical system.

As of 5 a.m. EST Tuesday, Entergy’s electrical power outages from Katrina peaked at nearly 1.1 million homes and businesses, with 790,000 in Louisiana and more than 300,000 in Mississippi without power. The company is expecting that additional outages could occur due to wet soil and occasional strong wind gusts.

“The outage total already has more than quadrupled the previous Entergy record of 270,000 set only last month during Tropical Storm Cindy,” the company said in a prepared statement. Before Cindy, the record was set in 1998 with Hurricane George, which knocked out power to 260,000.

The Florida Reliability Coordinating Council (FRCC) declared a generating capacity advisory Tuesday, making a public appeal for power conservation in light of the production shut ins in the Gulf. The FRCC noted that 30-35% of the state’s power generation comes from burning natural gas, most of which is delivered via pipeline from the Gulf. The agency asked that all electricity consumers in the state conserve by, among other things, reducing air conditioning usage in the late afternoon and early evening.

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