Oil, Gas Firms Restaff U.S. Gulf Platforms, Refineries

The U.S. Gulf Coast's energy producers moved to restart refineries and restart platforms Friday as Tropical Depression Isaac petered out over the Mississippi River Valley.
Nearly all of the oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's federal waters remained offline, however. Production of 1.3 million barrels a day of oil, or 95% of the region's total, was shut in, a level similar to the one seen Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Friday. Offshore natural-gas outages decreased slightly to 3.1 billion cubic feet a day, or 68% of the region's normal production, down from 3.3 billion cubic feet a day on Thursday.
Producers are expected to bring significant amounts of production back on-line by the end of the long weekend. Royal Dutch Shell PLC's (RDSA, RDSA.LN) U.S. unit, which began fully restaffing all of its central U.S. Gulf of Mexico operations on Friday and will continue in other areas on Saturday, said going back to the production levels seen before the storm would take between three and five days, depending on the readiness of processing and transportation infrastructure.
With early reports indicating the storm caused little major infrastructure damage, the storm "should be a one-week blip in terms of products and crude numbers," said Kyle Cooper, managing director of IAF Energy Advisors in Houston.
BP PLC (BP, BP.LN), the Gulf's largest energy producer, said it is redeploying staff to offshore facilities, and will start producing oil and gas there in the coming days. The company said aerial surveys showed no damage from Isaac, but crews will perform closer inspections when they return.
Chevron Corp. (CVX) began redeploying personnel offshore and restoring production "where it is safe to do so," the company said in a statement.
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 Isaac. Employees will conduct on-site inspections at five platforms Friday, after remote-monitoring systems indicated all the company's facilities were intact.
The company said it expects to restart production as pipeline and infrastructure availability allows.
BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP, BHP.AU) 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 closed 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 57,000-barrel-a-day facility in Port Allen, La., were in the process of restarting, the DOE said.
Also, the DOE said Friday that it provided an emergency loan of one million barrels of sweet crude oil to Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) to address the short-term impact of the hurricane on its refining capacity. The crude oil will come from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve's Bayou Choctaw site in Louisiana, and will be repaid with interest in three months, the DOE said. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the loan, requested by Marathon Thursday, is part of a "broader federal effort to respond to those impacted by Hurricane Isaac."
Marathon 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 maintenance crews are in the process of assessing the Louisiana refineries it had shut down, but the facilities aren't 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 isn't yet a timetable for restarting work.
"We should have a better idea this weekend," he said. Mr. Day had said Thursday that initial inspections didn't reveal 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 closing of the 1.2-million-barrel-a-day Capline Pipeline bringing crude oil from the Gulf Coast, will now ramp up to planned rates because the pipeline reopened.
Phillips 66's (PSX) Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, La., remained shut down and without power. The 247,000-barrel-a-day facility had some floodwater, though it is receding, a company spokesman said.
Chevron's Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi continues to operate, running at reduced rates "for precautionary reasons only," waiting for the nearby ship channel and maritime transportation to return to normal, Chevron said.
The DOE Friday said about 638,617 electricity customers were without power in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.