Throughout Monday and Tuesday, Gulf of Mexico operators continued to ferry crews back to platforms and rigs evacuated in advance of Hurricane Nate over the weekend and to restart production sidelined by the fast-moving storm. On Tuesday, the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Gulf of Mexico production of 1.02 million barrels of oil (58.5% of Gulf production) and 1.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas (46.12% of daily gas production) remained offline. BSEE said personnel remain evacuated from 66 production platforms, or 9% of the 737 manned facilities in the Gulf. In addition, personnel were evacuated from one drilling rig or 5% of the 20 nondynamically positioned drilling rigs now operating in the Gulf. BSEE said companies began returning crews to some of these facilities Sunday and Monday. The National Hurricane Center said the tropics remain active. The latest named system, Tropical Storm Ophelia, is 1,270 miles to the west-southwest of the Azores with top winds of 50 mph. TS Ophelia is expected to become a hurricane Wednesday, but its current course takes it deep into the Atlantic away from land.
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