Evacuations

Offshore oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which had been slammed by shut-ins and personnel evacuations as Tropical Storm Debby loomed last weekend, is nearly back to normal, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

Citing the impact of Hurricane Ike and unavailable capacity associated with mandatory evacuations, Tennessee declared a force majeure event at midday Friday for Station 25 in Cleveland, TX, and Station 32 in Jasper, TX. “This event will significantly limit throughput on the 100 Line,” Tennessee said. Gulf South said it was notified that the Burns Processing Plant had resumed operations and the pipeline was again accepting nominations for flow Thursday at 14 locations affected by a plant outage earlier in the week (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12). “Please be aware the plant may be affected by the approaching Hurricane Ike and could go off-line again,” Gulf South added.

Dennis’ early strength led to substantial evacuations and production shut ins in the densest production area of the Gulf, but producers reported that they were rapidly repopulating facilities and bringing supply back online Tuesday. Cumulative gas production shut in due to Hurricane Dennis rose to 22.4 Bcf, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) reported. However, daily shut-ins fell to 4.3 Bcf/d based on the reports of 55 companies as of 11 a.m. CDT on Tuesday.

Tropical Storm Fay, simmering off the Texas and Louisiana coasts Friday, remained stationary and appeared to be organizing slightly, and a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning remained in effect from Intracoastal City, LA to Port Aransas, TX late Friday.