Oil giants evacuate Gulf of Mexico rigs ahead of hurricane development

The oil and gas giants Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX), Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) and Shell Plc (NYSE:SHEL) evacuated staff and interrupted operations on oil platforms in the US Gulf of Mexico ahead of an expected hurricane, reports Reuters.

According to the National Hurricane Center, a developing system in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow from a tropical storm to hurricane strength on Monday before reaching the northwestern US Gulf Coast by mid of the week. The NHC says potential Tropical Cyclone Six was located 305 miles south-southeast of the Texas-Mexico border with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.

“While it is too early to pinpoint the exact location and extent of impact, the potential for life-threatening storm surge and damaging winds increases for portions of coastal Louisiana and Upper Texas beginning Tuesday night.,” said the NHC.

The NHC says the system is expected to bring heavy rain and considerable flash flooding along portions of southernmost Texas, the coast of far northeastern Mexico, southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi through Thursday morning.

In July, natural gas flows to the Freeport LNG export plant in Texas dropped to near zero and more than 1.8 million Texas homes and businesses they ran out of power after Category 5 Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, leaving a trail of dangerous storms, flooding and high winds in its wake. CenterPoint Energy (NYSE:CNP), a public utility that serves nearly 2.6 million customers, reported that more than 1.5 million were without power in its service area.

With a capacity to handle 2.1 billion cubic meters/day, Freeport is the third largest LNG export plant in the country, after Energy harnesses‘s (NYSE:LNG) 4.5 Gcf/d Sabine Pass in Louisiana and 2.4 Gcf/d Corpus Christi in Texas. Freeport has three liquefaction trains capable of converting approximately 0.7 Bcf/d of gas to LNG. LSEG data showed that feed gas to the facility averaged about 1.7 Gcf/d between June 30 and July 6.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

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