Plenty of repairs still to go

Six weeks before this year’s hurricane season begins in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil and gas industry is far from finished repairing the damage done by last year’s storms.

Divers have yet to inspect half of the platforms hit by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis. Some crews that are usually available to fix platforms and oil rigs are permanently shutting smaller wells that aren’t worth restoring.

“Repair and assessment operations are going on as we speak and the hurricane season is just around the corner now,” said Eugene Kim, a senior energy analyst at Wood Mackenzie in Houston. “Resources are already stretched to the limit.”

About 22 percent of Gulf oil production and 13 percent of gas production is still out of service, according to a government report Wednesday. Concern that the storm season, running from June to November, may bring further disruption helped push oil prices to records this week.

Bloomberg