Offshore staff
Some Gulf of Mexico platform and production facility operators are reportedly evacuating their personnel due to tropical storm Karen, expected to travel a path across the central Gulf and move toward coastal Louisiana or Mississippi over the next 48 hours.
According to Reuters, Chevron Corp. said on Thursday that it was evacuating some workers from its GoM operations, but also said that its production remains unaffected by the approaching storm.
Chevron did not specify which installations were being partially evacuated, but all four of the company’s operated platforms were in the projected path of the storm. This includes the Tahiti facility, which can produce up to 125,000 b/d of oil and 70 MMcf/d of natural gas.
BP has also been securing offshore facilities and drilling rigs. According to Rigzone, the company said it began evacuating non-essential personnel at its Thunder Horse, Na Kika, Atlantis and Mad Dog facilities on Wednesday. BP added that it was suspending oil and natural gas production in the eastern GoM, and that it was continuing to closely monitor the storm.
Diamond Offshore Drilling, Shell, Murphy Oil, and Apache all said they would be evacuating all non-essential workers in the eastern and central part of the Gulf. Diamond was reportedly not planning to evacuate workers in the western Gulf, but it was planning to evacuate a rig off the Mississippi coast on Monday.
10/03/2013
