Oct 29 (Reuters) - As crews began returning to U.S. Gulf of
Mexico offshore facilities on Thursday, this year's repeated oil
and gas production halts were already hitting energy firms'
results.
Eight named storms entered the U.S. Gulf of Mexico this
year, most spiraling up to damaging storms that required
offshore facility evacuations or temporary well shutdowns.
"It has been a difficult and challenging year because of the
number of storms," said Erik Milito, president of trade group
National Ocean Industries Association. U.S. offshore Gulf of
Mexico oil production likely will end the year down by about
200,000 barrels per day (bpd) from where it started, he said.
Hurricane Zeta this week cut 4 million barrels over four
days, halting up to 85% of daily offshore Gulf of Mexico oil
production and nearly 58% of its natural gas output. It and
other storms led to pipeline and onshore processing facilities
to close, hurting even wells that could stay open.
Weak energy prices dropped U.S. Gulf of Mexico output in
July to 1.65 million bpd, before the series of storm-related
shutdowns. It could recover some of the lost output in coming
weeks, NOIA's Milito said.
Well closings will hit results at Hess Corp, which
forecast a decline of 25,000 bpd in the current quarter on top
of an about 19,000 bpd loss in the prior quarter on offshore
maintenance and hurricane shut-ins.
W&T Offshore earlier forecast fourth quarter oil and
gas production would fall below analysts' forecasts even though
its platforms did not suffer major damage from repeated storms.
The shut-ins also added about $5 million to its costs.
In addition to shutdowns at two platforms, Royal Dutch Shell
on Thursday said other Gulf of Mexico output was hurt
by disruptions away from its platforms. It also was restarting
an onshore crude-oil processing unit knocked offline by power
disruptions from the storm.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba and Gary McWilliams; Editing by David
Gregorio)
