With Hurricane Isaac approaching landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 28, oil and gas companies shut down offshore and onshore facilities ahead of the slow-moving Category 1 storm.

By the morning of Aug. 29, the web buzzed with news of Isaac, which had stalled over New Orleans. Chevron and Exxon took to Twitter to announce they had evacuated personnel and suspended GoM and coastal refining operations until further notice. BP updated its hurricane hotline statement, stating it also had evacuated offshore personnel and shut-in offshore production. Royal Dutch Shell announced via its online storm center that some coastal refineries were operating at reduced rates. Others (including pipelines) were at various stages of shut-in.

On Aug. 28, Phillips 66 noted it had shut down its 239,000 b/d Lake Charles, La., refinery and its 247,000 b/d refinery in Belle Chasse, La. Citgo’s 425,000 b/d facility in Lake Charles was still running, although the company continued to monitor the progress of the storm. Motiva and Shell were also closing down process units, although plants further east in Louisiana and Alabama continued to operate.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) statistics estimated that 1.3 Bb/d of oil production were shut-in in US federal waters, and more than 3 Bcf/d of natural gas in federal waters had been shut-in because of the approaching hurricane.

BSEE issued a statement Aug. 29 that said 505 production platforms (84.73% of the manned platforms in the GoM) and 50 rigs (65.79% of the 76 rigs currently operating in the GoM) had been evacuated.

So when can operations start again? That remains unclear.

“Once the storm passes, people will be sent out to determine the extent of any possible damage,” IHS analyst Cinnamon Odell said. “Once it is deemed safe to return, personnel will begin returning in a phased fashion, and operations will gradually start back up.”

The industry has reason to be cautious, given the damage resulting from previous passing storms. For example, in 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita led to the destruction of 115 platforms, damage to 52 others, damage to 535 pipeline segments, and near total shut-down of offshore oil and gas production in the GoM, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE), the predecessor to BSEE.

These storms also hit the energy industry hard. More than nine months after the hurricanes, which occurred within a four-week period of each other, 2% of federal oil production and 13% of gas production remained shut-in, resulting in the loss of 150 MMbbl of oil and 730 Bcf of gas from domestic supplies, according to BOEMRE.

But both of those storms were Category 5 hurricanes, much stronger than Isaac. As a result of these two storms, offshore platforms were designed with improved offshore engineering to withstand stronger winds and currents.

Contact the author, Caroline Evans, at cevans@hartenergy.com.

Offshore