US Govt: 6% Of US Gulf Oil Output, 3.5% Gas Shut In After Storm

About half of the daily oil and natural-gas production that had been shut down by Tropical Storm Don had resumed by Sunday, a sign that producers are sending workers back to sea and that facilities were likely not damaged by the relatively weak storm, federal regulators said.

About 6% of oil production and 3.5% of natural-gas production in the U.S. Gulf remained shut down Sunday after Tropical Storm Don blew ashore in south Texas late Friday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement said. Don, a storm that had maximum sustained winds of about 50 miles per hour, weakened significantly when it approached land south of Corpus Christi, Texas, the National Hurricane Center said.

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) said late Sunday that production at its ultra-deep-water Perdido platform has resumed. "It will ramp up through tomorrow," a company spokeswoman said by email.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) said it had completed "extensive post-storm assessments" of western Gulf facilities that had been evacuated ahead of Don and was returning employees to those platforms to resume normal operations. Some 8,000 barrels of oil per day and 50 million cubic feet of natural gas remained shut down, however, the company said.

Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Apache Corp. (APA) also said Sunday that their employees were returning to work in the Gulf of Mexico and that shut-in production had resumed.

Oil companies, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) and Shell, were among those that said Saturday that they were deploying workers to restart offshore production in the western Gulf. BP PLC (BP) and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) sent workers back to deep-water operations Friday.

Production of about 84,072 barrels per day of oil and 186 million cubic feet of gas remained curtailed as of 11:30 am CDT . That compares with 152,785 barrels a day of oil and 349.5 million cubic feet of gas that were shut in a day earlier.

The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 30% of all U.S. oil production and about 7.4% of U.S. natural-gas production.

Personnel from seven operating platforms, equivalent to 1.1% of all the manned platforms in the Gulf and down from 62 on Saturday, remained evacuated from those facilities. All of the 62 drilling rigs currently operating in the Gulf are now manned, the government agency said. On Friday four rigs had been evacuated.

Estimated energy production from the Gulf of Mexico as of March was 1.6 million barrels of oil a day and 6.4 billion cubic feet of gas a day, the Bureau said in a press release.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement oversees oil and gas drilling in federal waters.