NEW YORK - Energy companies kept working through the US Labor Day holiday to restore damaged Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and natural gas production facilities and restart Gulf Coast refineries devastated by Hurricane Katrina last week.
Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production showed improvement. The US Minerals Management Service said 30.43 percent of oil output was online Monday morning, up from about 21 percent pumping on Saturday.
Natural gas production was at 47.75 percent on Monday, up from 42.21 percent on Saturday.
The government said nearly 28 percent of 819 manned production platforms and a similar percentage of 134 rigs operating in the Gulf remained evacuated on Monday.
REFINERIES START TO RETURN
Two of eight refineries shut in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katrina were in restart on Monday. Marathon Petroleum Co. LLC said its Garyville, Louisiana, refinery, third largest shut by Katrina, was in restart and should be back to normal by Tuesday.
Shell said on Sunday that Motiva's Convent, Louisiana, refinery was coming back slowly, while its Norco, Louisiana, refinery could be able to restart by the middle of next week.
The two largest shut facilities, Chevron Corp.'s in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and ConocoPhillips' in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, suffered extensive flood damage, according to the government.
Chevron said on Monday that the Pascagoula refinery did not suffer catastrophic damage. But Chevron said no restart estimate was available. It said it was still assessing damage as it worked to find employees dislocated by Katrina's fury.
Reduced refinery throughput run rates were seen in 12 other refineries as far away as Illinois and Ohio.
Colonial Pipeline's key gasoline and distillate products pipelines from the Gulf Coast heading northeast were at 73 percent capacity on Saturday and were forecast to reach 100 percent of normal capacity by Monday night.
US, EUROPE TO TAP RESERVES
The Department of Energy announced last week it will loan crude oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve to refiners. By Monday oil was pegged for Exxon Mobil Corp., BP, Placid Refining, Marathon, Total and Valero Energy Corp.
US President George W. Bush announced on Friday a general sale of 30 million more barrels that could reach refiners as soon as Sept. 20. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said the DOE could soon offer more crude if needed.
The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based energy agency for 26 industrialized countries, on Friday said it was prepared to tap up to 2 million barrels per day of its refined oil products reserves for 30 days.
The actions to make reserves available helped ease oil and gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. Electronic trading resumes Monday evening on the NYMEX.
While US markets were closed, Brent crude futures on Monday tumbled more than a dollar before settling at $64.84 a barrel on London's International Petroleum Exchange.
Story by Robert Gibbons
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
