Hurricane Frances slammed into the Louisiana coast on Wednesday with winds of 100 mph (161 kph), knocking out power to 375,000 customers and bringing heavy rain and flooding to the state. The winds quickly subsided and the hurricane was over southern Mississippi early Thursday, where another 54,000 customers were without power.
And she threw Shell Company Today, undisclosed problems were blamed for production losses at five additional platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Woodside Energy also halted production at an offshore platform due to a power outage onshore.
Analysts at UBS estimated that the storm could disrupt about 1.5 million barrels of Gulf of Mexico production, and would reduce the region’s monthly oil production by about 50,000 barrels per day.
Natural gas flows to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals are on track to fall to 11.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Thursday from about 12.7 bcfd on Tuesday and 13.4 bcfd a week ago, data from financial firm LSEG showed.
U.S. crude futures rose 1.7 percent on Monday on production losses. U.S. gas prices had earlier fallen less than 1 percent after liquefied natural gas plants escaped the brunt of Hurricane Frances, but were up 2 percent in the latest trade after a smaller-than-expected build in inventories last week.
