Nexen restoring Gulf Mexico production after hurricane-linked ...
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CALGARY (CP) - Nexen Inc. is restoring its deep-water oil production in the Gulf of Mexico after hurricane Ivan blew through and caused no significant damage to the Calgary-based firm&#39;s oil rigs.
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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers has gotten the brunt of criticism for the disaster, but many scientists say that oil drilling may have played a decisive role in bringing the Mississippi River Delta to the brink of collapse.
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Hurricane Ivan spared the critical Gulf Coast refining belt, but oil prices rose anyway Thursday on fears a new storm brewing in the Caribbean will delay tankers carrying imported crude to U.S. ports.Ivan swept east of major refineries, tank farms and other facilities in Louisiana and Texas. It also bypassed the biggest concentrations of offshore oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.ChevronTexaco's Pascagoula, Miss., refinery was the closest to the hurricane's path and remained closed Thursday. "The preliminary (damage) assessment is somewhat positive," said spokesman Steve Renfroe, who said the company had not determined when it could restart the plant.But on Ivan's heels Tropical Storm Jeanne knocked out a portion of production at a refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands and barreled toward Puerto Rico.As a result, oil for October delivery rose 30 cents to &#36;43.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.Energy companies feared Ivan would make landfall in Louisiana or Texas and damage refineries there. The Gulf Coast accounts for nearly half of U.S. daily refining capacity of 16 million barrels. U.S. refiners are running near capacity to build stocks of winter heating fuels."The industry dodged a bullet in that the storm was really a couple of hundred miles east of refinery row (north of New Orleans) up the Mississippi River," said Jeff Dietert, refining industry analyst at Simmons &amp; Co. He said precautionary closures eliminated about 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and other products from the daily total.One of the nation's most important pipelines, the Capline carrying imported crude from New Orleans to Patoka, Ill., for Midwest refiners, was undamaged, said Shell, operator of the line.Still, Dietert predicted higher futures prices for oil and gasoline - and ultimately for consumers - after the government reports data on fuel stockpiles next week. That report will show how much oil companies and their customers have drawn from crude and gasoline inventories to make up for deliveries delayed by Ivan and Jeanne.Colm McDermott, analyst at energy research firm John S. Herold, said consumers might escape without much pain. If the impact of the refinery closures and delivery delays is short-lived, wholesalers, retailers and others in the supply chain might eat price increases rather than pass them on.Reuters reported that Ivan forced the shutdown of eight refineries, or 13% of U.S. capacity. Half of those were restarting Thursday.Offshore, Shell and other producers were flying work crews back out to some evacuated oil and gas platforms and doing aerial damage assessment of others.Shell said its refining and chemical plants in Louisiana had restarted or were never shut down. A Mobile, Ala., chemical plant remained closed, it said.
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MEXICO CITY, July 11 -- A series of pipeline explosions sharply reduced gas supplies in central Mexico and forced the country's largest beer producer, as well as foreign-owned companies, to temporarily close factories or cut back production Wednesday.
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World crude prices have risen amid fears that supplies from the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico could be disrupted by Hurricane Ivan. Energy companies have evacuated thousands of offshore workers and shut down some production in the region.
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You might be surprised how far you have to drive from New Orleans, LA to get to the Gulf of Mexico.  Following     the west bank of the Mississippi River along Hwy 23, you go through the separate and well-separated towns of     Belle Chasse, Pointe a la Hache, Port Sulphur, Empire, Boothville, and finally over 60 miles from New Orleans     the tiny oilfield supply and marina town of Venice.    At Empire the highway goes over a pretty tall bridge and on the other side of the canal, beyond the levee     system, Katrina's storm surge came through with a vengeance.  The roads have been cleared but everywhere along     them are the twisted skeletons of steel buildings with vegetation hanging out of shattered second-story     windows.  A refrigerator sits atop the flooded husk of a house.  A perfect square of fenceless pickets     surrounds a perfectly bare concrete slab.  The occasional forlorn FEMA trailer can be spotted parked on one of     many slabs in a field of such slabs that was once a neighborhood.  The carcass of a cow is wedged improbably     in the canopy of a tree twenty feet up.    What is striking is not that the landscape looks like this; most of the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi     experienced such damage.  What is striking is that it looked like this when I visited last week, in August     2006, almost an entire year after the storm came through.
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Oil prices were hovering close to last weekâs record high today after breaking through the $50 mark again. Production problems in the Gulf of Mexico due to the impact of Hurricane Ivan continued to have
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NEW YORK -- Oil prices neared $49 a barrel yesterday, capping a rise of 7 percent for the week, as Gulf of Mexico crude production rebounded at a slower-than-expected rate in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.
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Crude oil in New York rose to a record $53.80 a barrel after the US said some production shutdowns in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Hurricane Ivan may last as long as six months.
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Crude oil prices closed higher Thursday in an up-and-down session as a consensus built that whatever havoc Hurricane Ivan causes in the southeast, its impact on Gulf Coast oil production will be short-lived.
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Oil eased from its record high on Friday as a hurricane subsided in the Gulf of Mexico and refineries looked set to return to normal operations.
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CALGARY - Oil and gas company Nexen Inc. posted higher third-quarter earnings on Thursday, but also lowered its production target for the year.
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The future of oil prices rests on the ability of Gulf of Mexico producers to recover from last month&#39;s hurricanes, BP has said as it unveiled a 43 per cent rise in profits.
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Utility companies in South Mississippi have strengthened procedures and developed new strategies to reason with hurricane season. After a hurricane -- no matter how large or small -- arguably the most critical resource is power.
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WASHINGTON - Oil prices rose Thursday despite reports that refineries along the Gulf Coast, as well as production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, that had been shut down were slowly being restaffed, as Hurricane Ivan proved to be less disruptive than feared.   "We've really not heard of any refineries in that area reporting any problems," and several are already being restarted, said Tom Bentz, a trader at BNP Paribas Futures in New York...
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Two offshore semi-submersible drilling rigs were found in the Gulf of Mexico with no apparent damage Thursday after they went missing in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.
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Despite a tropical storm and a tropical depression spinning in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, nothing currently threatens the U.S. oil and natural gas production in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.