A plunge in US gas futures right before the US Labor Day weekend erased a week's worth of gains, despite what were than mounting shut-ins at production platforms as Tropical Storm Lee lumbered into the central Gulf of Mexico. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (Boemre) said late last week that personnel had been evacuated from 169 platforms - 27% of the 617 manned platforms in the Gulf - and 16 rigs, 23% of the 62 rigs currently operating in the Gulf. By Monday, workers were returning to rigs, but in the meantime, a potentially storage-sapping 1.74 billion cubic feet per day of gas and 66,321 barrels per day of oil had been shut in, roughly 33% of the Gulf's gas and 47.6% of its oil production.
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