THE WALL STREET JOURNAL/Dow Jones: Shell: Some US Gulf Output To Remain Off Line Into 2005 : “ Some of Royal Dutch/Shell Group unit Shell Oil's Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production will remain off line into the first quarter of 2005, spokesman Fred Palmer said Wednesday” (ShellNews.net)
Posted 7 Oct 04
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Some of Royal Dutch/Shell Group unit Shell Oil's Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production will remain off line into the first quarter of 2005, spokesman Fred Palmer said Wednesday.
The new estimate means restoration of output knocked out by Hurricane Ivan will take longer than the company expected even last week. Sluggish progress in returning fields to service has pushed oil and gas prices up sharply in the past three weeks.
The company hopes to get output at its Ram-Powell field back up to 70% of pre- storm levels by early December and back up to full production during the first quarter of 2005, Palmer said. The field was producing daily gross sales of 244 million cubic feet of gas and 17,700 barrels of oil.
Shell expects to get production at its Main Pass 252 field up partially in early 2005.
"But we expect to ramp up to full production fairly quickly," Palmer said.
The field was producing 94 million cubic feet of gas and 1,800 barrels of oil a day before the hurricane hit.
The company's Cognac field should come back most quickly. Shell says 90% of oil and 70% of gas pre-hurricane output will be back on line by mid to late October.
"We expect to be back to full by mid-November," Palmer said.
The field was producing 30 million cubic feet of gas and 6,000 barrels of oil a day before the storm.
Last week, a Shell spokesman said the facilities would be back on line by the end of the year.
About 28.1% of the Gulf's daily oil output and 14.6% of its gas output remained off line Wednesday, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service said. After some improvement in the past two days, those percentages represent a step backwards in the restoration of output.
As of Wednesday morning, 478,126 barrels of oil a day and 1.8 billion cubic feet a day of gas remain off line. Cumulative losses in the three weeks since Hurricane Ivan began affecting production has come to 16.09 million barrels of oil and 70.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
-By Katya Kazakina, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4427;