While US Gulf of Mexico operators slowly return personnel to rigs and platforms to resume drilling and production following last week’s evacuations caused by Hurricane Harvey, at least two onshore Texas operators are resuming work this week from the Eagle Ford shale.
Baytex Energy Corp. said on Aug. 28 that it has begun to restart its Eagle Ford operations and expects to increase production throughout the week, which will be balanced with the availability of downstream markets along the Gulf Coast. Drilling and completion operations are also are expected to resume this week.
EOG Resources Inc. is restarting drilling where it’s safe to do so in the Eagle Ford, the company said in a statement to Reuters.
Other Eagle Ford operators to have reported curtailments in drilling, completion, or production activity due to the storm include ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp., Pioneer Natural Resources Co., BHP Billiton Ltd., and Statoil ASA (OGJ Online, Aug. 28, 2017).
The Texas Railroad Commission as of Aug. 26 estimated that 300,000-500,000 b/d of Eagle Ford crude production had been shut in from a pre-storm estimate of 870,000 b/d, and 3 bcfd of gas production had been shut-in from a pre-storm estimate of 6 bcfd.
Refineries, ports remain closed
As of 7:00 a.m. CDT on Aug. 29, all six refineries in the Corpus Christi area and five refineries in the Houston-Galveston area were shut down, according to public reports. These refineries have a combined refining capacity of 2,361,149 b/d, equal to 24.4% of total Gulf Coast (PADD 3) refining capacity and 12.8% of total US refining capacity.
In addition, refineries in the Houston-Galveston area, one refinery in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, and two refineries in the Lake Charles area were operating at reduced rates.
Thomson Reuters notes that Harvey could cause fuel shortages in Latin America after it shut in around 1 million b/d of US gasoline and diesel exports typically destined for countries such as Mexico.
Overall, an estimated 8-9 million bbl of gasoline and 6-7 million bbl of distillates have been lost due to the outages, the information services firm said.
All major ports along the Texas Gulf Coast except Brownsville are closed. The Port of Corpus Christi is assessing damage and expects to return to normal operations by Sept. 4. The Port of Lake Charles in Louisiana also is closed.
Cheniere Energy Inc. reported “only minor cosmetic impacts” to its Corpus Christi LNG construction site, while LNG production operations at its Sabine Pass facility continued through the storm.
