By Georgina McCartney
HOUSTON (Reuters) -Some oil producers on Thursday were further curtailing their U.S. Gulf of Mexico output after Hurricane Francine disrupted their onshore infrastructure, while export ports in southern Texas began to reopen.
Francine hit the Louisiana coast on Wednesday with up to 100 mph winds (161 kph), knocking out power to 375,000 customers and bringing heavy rains and flooding to the state. Its winds dropped quickly and the storm was over southern Mississippi early on Thursday where another 54,000 customers were without power.
As drillers began to assess damage, the extent of Francine’s impact on energy production began to emerge with new, higher estimates of lost output from the 169 offshore platforms evacuated.
Energy producers reported on Thursday they had shut-in 42%, or 730,000 barrels per day of Gulf of Mexico oil production and 53%, or nearly 992 million cubic feet of natural gas, offshore regulator Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.
Those losses helped U.S. oil futures gain 2.5% to $69.01 per barrel on Thursday and added nearly 4% to natural gas futures, which rose to $2.357 per million British thermal units, both in afternoon trading.
Shell on Thursday blamed undisclosed downstream issues for production losses at five additional Gulf of Mexico platforms. Woodside Energy also shut output at an offshore platform due to a power loss onshore.
The storm likely disrupted about 1.5 million barrels of Gulf of Mexico production, analysts at UBS estimated, and will reduce the region’s monthly oil production by 50,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Natural gas flows to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants were on track to fall to 11.7 billion cubic feet per day on Thursday from about 12.7 bcfd on Tuesday and 13.4 bcfd a week ago, data from financial firm LSEG showed.
Most of that reduction was due to a sharp drop in flows at Cameron LNG to 0.6 bcfd on Thursday, from 1.9 bcfd on Tuesday. Operator Sempra Infrastructure did not reply to requests for comment. The port of Cameron remained closed on Thursday, according to data from the U.S. Coast Guard.
Top U.S. oil and fuel export ports from south to central Texas reopened. Corpus Christi, the largest oil export port by volume, lifted restrictions, while ports in Freeport, Houston to as far north as Sabine reopened, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Louisiana ports including Cameron, Lake Charles, New Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and sections of the Mississippi River remained closed, according to the Coast Guard. The closures were affecting energy, agricultural and metals exports.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston, Anushree Mukherjee and Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; writing by Gary McWilliams, editing by Jason Neely, Deepa Babington, Marguerita Choy and Sandra Maler)
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