Resuscitated Ivan stirred up the Gulf of Mexico again on Thursday as a tropical storm but lost some strength midday after peaking with 60 mph winds in the morning off of the southwestern coast of Louisiana. However, the second coming of the much more devastating hurricane that destroyed at least seven platforms in the eastern Gulf last week failed to strike fear in the minds of many producers.

Anadarko, ExxonMobil, BP and others said they had not made new plans for evacuations, but were watching the storm closely. Ivan’s return, however, has prevented many from conducting thorough damage assessments and returning to normal operations.

At 4 p.m. Ivan was 30 miles south-southeast of Cameron, LA, and 65 miles east-southeast of Port Arthur, TX, and heading northwest at 8 mph with sustained winds near 45 mph. The center of the storm was expected to make landfall Thursday night.

“We’ve evacuated less than 10 people but we fully expect to redeploy them tomorrow,” said BP spokeswoman Ayana McIntosh Lee. “We are still working to get back up to normal operations from [Ivan’s first visit].”

She said BP had returned all staff to all of its facilities prior to the second coming of Ivan. However, the company still has to conduct detailed inspections and develop repair plans in order to get full production back on line. BP would not provide current production statistics. “Our initial assessments confirm minor impacts to instrumentation and electrical systems on some of our deepwater facilities [from Ivan’s rampage through the eastern Gulf last week]. We’re making progress everyday.”

ExxonMobil still has a “nominal amount of production shut in from last week’s Ivan. This current situation has not necessitated any additional production shut in or evacuations,” said spokesman Bob Davis. “We have about 7,000 bbl/d of crude production shut in and less than 100 MMcf/d of gas, but most of that is associated with third party processing or pipelines being down. We have some limited production shut in in the Alabama and Florida Panhandle area mainly [due] to continued power outages.” ExxonMobil has a total of about 80,000 bbl/d of crude oil production in the Gulf and a total of 1.2 Bcf/d of natural gas.

Anadarko reported normal operations despite the return of Ivan. “We are back to normal production since the first storm with no damage to our platforms and we are watching the storm that is out there right now but we haven’t changed anything as far as production or personnel,” said Anadarko spokeswoman Margaret Cooper.

Newfield Exploration said it sustained no major damage to its operated platforms from Ivan, but expected to spend the next 30 to 60 days making minor repairs. About 1 Bcfe of Newfield’s net production was deferred because of the hurricane. An additional 26 MMcfe/d remains offline awaiting repairs to both operated and non-operated production facilities and pipelines in the Ship Shoal, Main Pass and Viosca Knoll areas of the Gulf, the company said. Combined, Newfield expects that 2.5 Bcfe of net production will be deferred.

The company also disclosed that a portion of anticipated production volumes from the Glider Field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico would be deferred as a result of damage to the subsea tree on one of the two producing wells. The damage occurred following well completion operations and during rig demobilization, not because of Ivan. The operator is working to repair the system and resume production from the wellbore. Newfield estimates that deferred production from Glider will be 2.5 Bcfe net. Including the impact of Ivan and the deferred production at Glider, the company now expects to produce about 240 Bcfe in 2004.

Meanwhile, Noble Energy, which lost three Main Pass platforms after Ivan’s first visit last week said Ivan Part II has hindered the return of personnel and a complete damage assessment. “We were able to find the [destroyed] platforms with sonar. They are on the ocean floor within a 400-foot radius of where the platforms were originally positioned, but unfortunately with the weather that we are having in the Gulf now we have not been able to get divers out there to really fully assess what we’ve got,” said Noble spokesman Greg Panagos.

He said that production lost from the three destroyed platforms totaled 1,400 boe/d of oil, only 13% of which was natural gas. A fourth Noble Energy platform also had minor damage. Noble had seven platforms in the Main Pass area, which represented only about 3% of its production.

“It’s going to take a little while until we know the full extent of the damage from this storm,” said Panagos. “I think there were 40 and 50 foot waves for extended periods of time and then some of our buoys show that there were some waves, not many but some, that were over 70 feet. That’s a lot of force. If you see that above the surface, you can just imagine what is going on under the water. Those platforms just took a beating.”

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) has reported that there were a total of seven platforms that were destroyed by Ivan. In addition to the destroyed platforms there also were four platforms with extensive damage, two spars and one MODU with extensive damage, one platform that is leaning over, two rig derricks leaning or missing and 13 pipeline leaks.

On Thursday, MMS reported that 39 platforms and one rig were evacuated, which is eight more than on Wednesday. However shut in totals continued to fall, albeit very slowly. Shut in production Thursday totaled 2,330 MMcf/d of gas and 471,542 bbl/d of oil, which excludes the production lost from destroyed platforms. Cumulative production shut ins totaled 40.95 Bcf of gas and 9.6 million bbl of oil.

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