Hurricane Georges took aim at the Gulf of Mexico Friday afterpassing the southern tip of Florida, and producers and pipelineswere responding. The pace of platform evacuations and productionshut-ins accelerated rapidly following tentative starts in theMobile Bay area Thursday. Evacuation reports extended as far westas the West Cameron area off southwest Louisiana. As of late Fridayafternoon a hurricane watch was in effect from Morgan City, LA, toSt. Marks, FL.

The situation was extremely fluid, so shut-in reports at anygiven moment were almost certain to be inaccurate (probably on thelow side) only minutes later. Nevertheless, a spot check by DailyGPI was able to ascertain well over 1 Bcf/d in production losses asof Friday afternoon.

A Transco spokeswoman said gas control had reported no lossesthat morning but advised checking back. Sure enough, Transco hadlost 250-300 MMcf/d as of mid-afternoon, “but we expect thosefigures to increase dramatically as the day and weekend go on.”

Texas Eastern was down 300 MMcf/d on the Venice (LA) System andanother 100 MMcf/d on the Cameron (LA) System, a Duke Energyspokesman reported. Affiliate Trunkline had lost 150 MMcf/d on theTerrebonne system.

The tally was 325-350 MMcf/d on Sonat but “nothing yet” onaffiliate Sea Robin, which is farther west, a representative said.Sea Robin evacuated its Vermilion 149 platform, but that wasalready off-line for maintenance anyway. Sonat-operated DestinPipeline, which had been flowing 110-120 MMcf/d, was shut inentirely.

Tennessee reported 300 MMcf/d shut in on its eastern side,mostly in the South Pass area. Columbia Gulf said it wasn’t seeingany losses yet but had gotten calls from producers saying they wereevacuating, mainly in the Garden Banks and West Cameron areas.Columbia Gulf evacuated Vermilion 149, its only manned platform.

Stingray wasn’t having any outage problems per se, a spokesmansaid, but nominations for Saturday were off 10% from normal flow of1.2 Bcf/d. He said people were securing onshore supplies onaffiliate NGPL and taking them to Henry Hub to make easternconnections because of Mobile Bay losses. That was causing somecurtailment of Stingray capacity, he said.

Florida Gas froze its nominations for the weekend, not allowingany increases. It was experiencing production losses but not givingany volume figures “because they’re changing all the time,” aspokeswoman said.

Producers such as Texaco, which ceased all drilling operations,often were reporting taking only “non-essential” personnel ashore.But Shell expected to complete 800 evacuations by the end ofFriday. It was shutting in some gas but unable to provide specificamounts or locations. Exxon said it evacuated 250 non-essentials buthad not shut in any of its 850 MMcf/d offshore prodcution. Amoco saidsince most of its offshore gas is in the central and western Gulf, itwas starting to evacuate only off eastern Louisiana. There were noshut-ins at platforms operated by Amoco, a spokesman said, but it waslosing some equity gas at sites operated by others. For morehurricane-related information see https://www.intelligencepress.com/features/

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