Daily status report on the energy industry in the US Gulf

 

-- The BORCO oil terminal in the Bahamas, owned by Bahamas Oil Refining Co, will be out of operation for at least three weeks due to damage sustained from Hurricane Wilma, market sources said on Oct 25. A BORCO spokesman was unable to comment on the terminal's operations.

-- Crude production from the Hibernia field offshore eastern Canada is not expected to be affected by Hurricane Wilma as it pushes north away from the Atlantic Coast of the US into Canadian waters, a spokeswoman for field operator ExxonMobil said on Oct 25. "We do not anticipate Wilma will have any impact on Hibernia crude production," said the spokeswoman. A source at one of the field's equity partners agreed, saying: "We are used to pretty bad weather out here so as it stands I doubt there will be any impact on production."

-- BP chief executive John Browne said on Oct 25 he expected the company's full year production to average around 4-mil b/d of oil equivalent, below the company's guidance of 4.1- to 4.2-mil boe/d mainly as a result of the impact of storms in the US Gulf of Mexico.

-- An explosion in a crude unit furnace at ConocoPhillips' 239,000 b/d refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, occurred while the major was attempting to restart the plant the weekend of Oct 8-9, US Gulf Coast market sources told Platts on Oct 25. A ConocoPhillips spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. The refinery was damaged during Hurricane Rita.

-- Royal Dutch Shell on Oct 25 said Motiva Enterprises has restarted most of the units at its 275,000 b/d Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, and expects the plant to be at full rates by the end of the week. The refinery was shut down Sep 22 ahead of Hurricane Rita, which made landfall along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast two days later. The plant was damaged during the storm.

-- The US Department of Energy on Oct 25 said it had delivered almost half of the 11-mil bbl of crude oil sold from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in early September in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but that it will take another month for the balance to make its way to the market. The deliveries, initially due to be completed in October, will go into November because of delays caused by Hurricane Rita, DOE said. The agency also said it has allowed Total and BP to reduce by a total of 3.7-mil bbl the volumes of loans they contracted to take from SPR in the wake of Katrina. The crude loans from SPR were separate from the sale of barrels from the reserve.

-- US independent Pogo Producing, in its third-quarter earnings statement, said 45,000 Mcf/d of its gas production capacity and 13,000 b/d of crude output remained shut in following Katrina and Rita. The volumes represent most of Pogo's offshore production, "and those curtailments will continue until completion of repairs of mostly outside-owned shore base facilities and gathering lines, as well as joint venture-owned platform facilities," the company said.

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