Business
18:32, 27-Aug-2017
Hurricane Harvey halts 25 percent of US Gulf oil output
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About 25 percent of US Gulf of Mexico oil production is offline due to Tropical Storm Harvey, the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said on Saturday.
That equates to roughly 428,568 barrels of oil per day out of the roughly 1.75 million bpd pumped from the Gulf. The amount of oil production offline increased from Friday, when roughly 22 percent of the output was affected.
About 26 percent of Gulf natural gas production is offline, or about 835 million cubic feet per day, BSEE said.
Roughly 112 platforms have been evacuated in the Gulf so far as a result of Harvey, about 15 percent of those in the region. Half of the drilling rigs in the Gulf have also been evacuated, BSEE said.
BSEE tabulates the data by polling 30 Gulf operators.
More than 45 percent of the country’s refining capacity is along the US Gulf Coast, and nearly a fifth of the nation’s crude is produced offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
The supply interruptions are expected to push gasoline prices higher.
The US government said it would make emergency stockpiles of crude available if needed to plug disruptions. It has regularly used them to dampen the impact of previous storms on energy supplies.
Source(s): Reuters