--Murphy continues production unabated
--Gulf oil production 29% of U.S. total
--Apache and others monitoring situation, no changes yet to operations
HOUSTON--Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) and Murphy Oil Corp. (MUR) are
evacuating all nonessential personnel from their Gulf of Mexico
operations as the likelihood of a tropical storm in the region
increases, the companies said Friday.
Removing nonessential employees is generally the first step in
preparing for the onset of a tropical cyclone. BP PLC (BP, BP.LN),
Chevron Corp. (CVX), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSB, RDSA.LN,
RDSB.LN) and other oil and gas companies operate oil rigs and
platforms staffed with thousands of workers in the Gulf.
In the Gulf of Mexico, Anadarko operates the Independence Hub, a
cluster of 11 gas fields about 120 miles southeast of Biloxi, Miss.,
that produced nearly 10% of total Gulf natural gas in 2010. In all,
Anadarko produced about 157,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the
Gulf in 2010.
"If the weather appears to move in the direction of any of our
facilities, we are prepared to immediately remove all workers and
safely shut in production," Anadarko said in a bulletin on its Web
site announcing the removal of nonessential employees.
The National Hurricane Center said Friday a large weather system near
the northern coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula has a 70% chance of
becoming a tropical storm during the next 48 hours. The system is
expected to travel into the northern Gulf area before veering off,
although forecasters disagree as to which way it would move, said
Michael Brennan, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane
Center.
"It's a large system already," Mr. Brennan said. "It could go more
eastward toward the Florida panhandle, but others think it will go
more westward toward the Texas coast."
Murphy, which operates the Thunder Hawk, Medusa and Frontrunner
platforms in the Gulf, is also removing nonessential employees from
the area.
"We are monitoring the storm closely," Murphy spokesman Barry Jeffery
said. "There has been no impact on operations."
Apache Corp. (APA), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Royal Dutch Shell said
they are monitoring the situation but not yet evacuating employees.
Other companies' plans weren't immediately known.
Tropical storms and hurricanes can be disruptive to the U.S. Gulf's
massive energy infrastructure. Gulf of Mexico federal offshore
production accounts for 29% of oil and 12% of gas production in the
U.S., down from about 30% for oil and 17% for gas in 2005, according
to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As of March, federal offshore production from the Gulf was 1.4 million
barrels of oil per day and 4.4 billion cubic feet of gas per day, down
from its peak of 1.7 million barrels of oil a day and 6.3 billion
cubic feet of gas per day in 2010.
Write to Ben Lefebvre at ben.lefebvre@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 22, 2012 12:15 ET (16:15 GMT)
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