Offshore Rigs Evacuated

According to reports, U.S. and Mexican oil and natural gas producers evacuated some offshore Gulf of Mexico platforms and rigs, curtailing output as Hurricane Dean whipped past Jamaica heading towards the Yucatan Peninsula.

Six of the 834 manned oil and natural-gas platforms along the U.S. Gulf Coast have been evacuated, the U.S. Interior Department's Minerals Management Service said Sunday in a statement.

That's shut about 1.8 percent of the Gulf's 1.3 million barrels of daily oil production and 0.7 percent of the region's natural gas.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc evacuated 380 workers Saturday, the company said in a statement. Shell has shut production in the Gulf by 23,000 barrels of oil and 47.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The storm's eye was aimed at Kingston, Jamaica, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its Sunday afternoon advisory. The storm was heading west-northwest at about 18 miles per hour, putting it on a path to cross the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula late today before heading into the southern Gulf.

Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, plans to evacuate 13,360 workers from its oil platforms in the Campeche Sound by noon today, reducing output from the world's third-biggest field by as much as 400,000 barrels of oil per day. The company may decide to evacuate 994 remaining workers and shut down the field's entire production of 1.9 million barrels a day, Carlos Ramirez, a Pemex spokesman said. Transocean Inc., planned to evacuate 93 people from a drilling rig. (Souce: Bloomberg)