As Zeta Dissolves, 58% of Gulf Gas Shut In
As remnants of hurricane Zeta headed out to the western Atlantic the afternoon of October 29, some 57.6% of Gulf of Mexico gas production – about 1.56bn ft3/day – remained shut in by operators, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said.
Based on operator status reports filed with the BSEE, personnel had been evacuated from 228 production platforms in the Gulf, while two non-dynamically positioned rigs remained evacuated and four dynamically positioned rigs were still off-location.
Based on the reports, BSEE estimates that nearly 85% of Gulf oil production, or about 1.57mn b/d, is also shut-in.
In its final forecast update on Zeta at 5 pm EDT October 29, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said the post-tropical cyclone was moving east off the coast of New Jersey.
Zeta crashed ashore near New Orleans on the afternoon of October 28 as a Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained winds of more than 110 miles/hour. Moving quickly across the southern US, it left three dead in Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia and cut power to more than 2.4mn residents from Louisiana to North Carolina.
Zeta was the fifth named storm to hit Louisiana this year and the 27th named storm this hurricane season, one short of the record set in 2005.