About 11% of US Gulf of Mexico oil production has been shut-in as operators evacuate platforms in the possible path of a tropical depression expected to pass through the Central-Eastern and Eastern Gulf of Mexico, the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said Monday.
Offshore operator reports submitted to BSEE as of late Monday morning show operators had shut-in a total 168,334 b/d of oil output as they evacuated crews from a total of six production platforms, the agency said in a statement. There is a total of 781 manned platforms in the US Gulf.
Total Gulf of Mexico production was almost 1.62 million b/d in May, the latest month for which data was available from the Energy Information Administration.
Tropical Depression 9 is currently off the west coast of Cuba, but the National Hurricane Center expects it to become a tropical storm on Tuesday and veer to the northwest. It is then forecast to head to the northeast and could make landfall in western Florida later in the week, the NHC said. BSEE said shut-in production figures are estimates based on the amount of oil and natural gas the companies plan to produce that day.
Operators have also shut in about 190,000 Mcf/d of gas output, BSEE said, or 5.51% of total US Gulf gas production.
