Oil workers flee as storm moves through U.S. gulf

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Friday August 3 11:12 AM ET

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010803/ts/energy_barry_dc_1.html

Oil Workers Flee as Storm Moves Through U.S. Gulf

By Andrew Kelly

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of offshore workers were evacuated as Tropical Storm Barry moved slowly toward oil and natural gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday on a course that seemed headed for southeast Louisiana.

National Hurricane Center (news - web sites) forecasters said the storm was most likely to come ashore near New Orleans where it could pose a threat to the area's many oil refineries, though it may take another three days for the storm to make landfall.

Early on Friday morning the storm was located off Florida's western coast, about 225 miles southeast of the Mississippi River, and advancing slowly toward the main oil- and gas-producing areas of the central Gulf.

The Gulf of Mexico provides about one quarter of U.S. domestic production of both natural gas and crude oil -- 13 billion cubic feet of gas and 1.4 million barrels of oil a day. Oil companies with offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico said they had taken steps to protect workers by moving them onshore until the storm passes, but they said they had not yet suspended any oil or gas production.

GETTING WORKERS OUT OF HARM'S WAY

Chevron Corp. spokesman Jeff Moore said that by late Thursday the company had evacuated 770 of its 1,700 offshore workers from the Gulf and would bring more ashore on Friday.``We want to ensure that all of our employees and contractors are out of harm's way,'' he said.

Shell Oil Co. and Unocal Corp. said they had also evacuated workers from offshore platforms. All three companies said they had not yet suspended any of their oil and gas production.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), located 20 miles off the Louisiana coast, on Friday said it was continuing its normal operations of offloading huge crude oil tankers. In June, choppy seas caused by Tropical Storm Allison forced LOOP to close for 36 hours.

U.S. energy markets seemed to be taking Barry in stride on Friday morning. September crude oil futures were 14 cents lower at $27.57 per barrel while natural gas futures were down 18 cents at $3.015 cents per thousand cubic feet.

Barry weakened slightly overnight, with maximum sustained winds dropping to 40 miles per hour from 45 and the National Hurricane Center lowered the probability of it becoming a hurricane within 72 hours to 25 percent.

Companies are often forced to suspend or ``shut in'' oil and gas production when a tropical storm or hurricane passes directly through a producing area. And Barry could cause more problems for the energy industry if it makes landfall in southeast Louisiana as expected.

The New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas of Louisiana, where the storm appears to be headed, are both major oil-refining centers. Barry is the second named storm of the 2001 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Tropical weather systems are given names when maximum sustained winds reach tropical storm strength of 39 mph. They become hurricanes when winds top 74 mph.

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), August 03, 2001


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