No waiting game for oil companies

Some can afford to wait. Some can’t.

Shell Oil is not taking any chances. Especially with a hurricane churning in the Gulf of Mexico.

At sea, employees gather their belongings and get on board a chopper bound for shore.
In all there are more than 800 rigs running in the Gulf. Most of them relatively close to shore.

There is plenty of impact from a storm in the Gulf even if the rigs don’t take a direct hit.

For example, the Magnolia rig was shut down for 20 days after Hurricane Rita in 2005. That’s 20 days of no production and in a tight market, you know what that means.

KHOU