Saturday, September 1, 2012

Oil, Gas Companies Restaff U.S. Gulf Coast Energy Infrastructure

The U.S. Gulf Coast's energy producers moved to restart refineries and restart platforms on Friday as Tropical Depression Isaac petered out over the Mississippi River Valley.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) said it has started the process of restaffing platforms in the eastern and central Gulf of Mexico that were evacuated ahead of Hurricane Isaac. Employees will conduct on-site inspections at five platforms Friday, after remote monitoring systems indicated that all the company's facilities were intact.

The company said it expects to restart production as pipeline and infrastructure availability allows.

BHP Billiton (BHP) unit BHP Billiton Petroleum said it began restaffing its Gulf of Mexico production platforms Friday. "Production will resume as soon as possible," a spokesman said.

The U.S. Department of Energy said Friday some 878,000 barrels of refining capacity remained shut down, as four refineries in the area remained shut down and five were operating at a reduced rate. Two refineries--Motiva Enterprises LLC's 235,000 barrel-a-day Convent, La. refinery and Placid Refining's Port Allen, La.'s 57,000 barrel-a-day facility, were in the process of restarting, DOE said.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) said Friday its Garyville, La., refinery suffered no significant damage and has continued to operate at reduced rates. The facility, however, "did receive a large amount of rainfall," the company said.

Marathon plans to operate the facility at a reduced rate until "the normal crude supply logistics return," a spokesman said in a statement.

Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) said that maintenance crews are in the process of assessing the Louisiana refineries it had shut down, but the facilities are not yet up and running.

Employees will return over the weekend to begin the process of restarting operations at the 125,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Meraux and the 205,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Norco, in St. Charles Parish. Valero spokesman Bill Day said there is not yet a timetable for restarting work.

"We should have a better idea this weekend," he said. Mr. Day had said Thursday that initial inspections did not show anything more than minor wind damage to the refineries.

Valero's 180,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Memphis, Tenn., which had to reduce its rates due to the close of the 1.2 million-barrel-a-day Capline Pipeline bringing crude from the Gulf Coast, will now ramp up to planned rates because the pipeline re-opened.

As of Thursday, 95% of the oil production in the Gulf of Mexico's federal waters was off-line, an amount that totaled 1.3 million barrels of oil per day. Three-quarters of the area's natural gas production, or 3.3 billion cubic feet a day, was also offline, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. An update is expected at 2 p.m. Eastern daylight time.

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@dowjones.com and Angel Gonzalez at angel.gonzalez@dowjones.com

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Copyright ? 2012 Dow Jones Newswires

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