(New throughout, adds details on cargoes, production volume)
By Devika Krishna Kumar and Marianna Parraga
Sept 9 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the
largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, on Thursday canceled
some customer shipments due to damages to offshore facilities
from Hurricane Ida, signaling energy losses would continue for
weeks.
About three-quarters of U.S. Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil
output remain halted after Ida tore through in late August.
Shell and other oil companies warned they could not yet say when
full production would resume. The hurricane was one of the most
devastating for oil producers since back-to-back storms in 2005
cut energy output for months.
Shell owns about 80% of the Mars offshore oilfield, and in
total pumps about 332,000 barrels of oil per day from its eight
facilities in the region. Damage assessments at a transfer hub
that moves oil and gas from three deepwater oilfields are
underway, Shell has said.
"Crews are working to complete a comprehensive assessment of
the damage and to the degree possible, assess how long
production from our Mars corridor assets will be impacted,"
Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith said in a statement.
'NUMEROUS CONTRACTS'
The company declared force majeure on "numerous contracts
that we anticipate will be impacted by the damage." Force
majeure is a legal provision used when unforeseen events such as
storms prevent companies from meeting contractual obligations.
BP Plc, co-owner of the Mars field and the second largest
Gulf oil producer, said this week it was resuming operations at
some of its own platforms. But it had no immediate comment on
the status of Mars shipments on Thursday.
At least two large cargoes of Mars crude bound for China
were canceled, according to people familiar with the matter.
Asian buyers including China and South Korea had stepped up
purchases of Gulf-produced crude in recent months, and now face
lengthy delays before shipments arrive as oil companies assess
damage from Ida.
China's Unipec, the trading arm of Asia's top oil refiner
Sinopec, was expecting late September and early October
deliveries of Mars crude, the Gulf sour benchmark, to be
disrupted, the people said.
SHIPS ARRIVING
As of Thursday, at least three very large crude carriers
(VLCCs) mostly chartered by Chinese customers were en route to
the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port for September loadings. Another
four large crude cargoes this week departed for India and Europe
from the Southtex Lightering area off Texas.
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the largest deepwater
export terminal for loading crude oil, remained offline as of
Thursday. U.S. oil exports sank in the most recent week, falling
to 2.3 million barrels per day, a fall of 700,000 bpd, as a
result of the shut ins.
Shell has started to send offshore workers to its Appomattox
production platform while damage assessments are continuing at
its West Delta-143 (WD-143) offshore facilities. West Delta
transfers crude to onshore facilities for processing and export.
(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York, Ron Bousso in
London, Marianna Parraga in Houston and Florence Tan in
Singapore; Editing by David Gaffen, Chizu Nomiyama, David Evans
and David Gregorio)
