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| Oil companies begin inspecting damage in Gulf |
| 2005-08-31 |
| Oil companies are getting their first glimpse today of facilities battered by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. On a reconnaissance flight, Shell found damage to at least one of its facilities, its Mars platform, which it said "sustained topside damage" — the structure above the ocean housing controls, production equipment and quarters. The company said it plans to send crews via helicopter today to several of its facilities to perform detailed inspections. BP started helicopter flyovers of several of its facilities today, and so far, the news has been good. "No damage was observed from these aerial overflights, but we'll know more when we get the folks on board to complete their more detailed onboard inspections," said Hugh Depland, a spokesman for BP. BP has already started to move small crews to some of its platforms. The crews will restart generators and inspect the facilities for damage prior to bringing them back on line. The company did discover a mobile drilling rig that had become adrift and ended up next to its Holstein platform. On Monday, there were reports of several rigs that had gone adrift. The rigs are often equipped with electronic locator devices so the companies can locate and retrieve them when they come free of their moorings. Crews from drilling companies Noble and Transocean, which own two of the wayward rigs, are scheduled to fly out by mid-day to reestablish the rigs' operating systems. Anchor vessels and tugboats have been deployed to the two drifting rigs to remove loose anchor lines and hook up the rigs to towing bridles. The drilling companies plan to bring the rigs to shallow water or shipyards for repairs. Exxon Mobil, Conoco, Apache Corp. are also inspecting their facilities. Kerr-McGee said it has returned 50 workers to its facilities in the western Gulf, which was spared the brunt of the storm. The company expects to be able to today to restart half of the 130,000 barrel of oil a day production it shut down over the weekend. "We're ramping it up throughout the day," said John Christiansen, a Kerr-McGee spokesman. In all, more than 92 percent of the Gulf's oil output and 83 percent of its natural gas production was offline due to evacuations and shut downs completed in advance of the storm. More than a quarter of the nation's oil and gas comes from state and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Drilling rigs are a relatively small part of the problem. Quite good news to hear Mars is at least still in existence - it is a big producer and right about on Katrina's path. Long-term problems will be from the pipelins tied into tangles of steel spaghetti and the thousands of marginal shallow wells lost or damaged beyond repair and not 'big' enough to be worth redrilling. Investment tip - get a long-term lease on a shallow water jack-up someplace (maybe West Africa?) and bring it to the Gulf of Mexico. Or work boats, etc. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2005-08-31 19:01 |