50 U.K. Oil Workers Missing...20 to 30 Rigs Lost

[Mac]

Wow! This is bad. Really bad.

UK oil test firm lists 50 missing after hurricane
By Harry Wallop (Filed: 06/09/2005)

Fifty employees of Intertek, the UK testing company, are missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The company employs more than 4,000 people in the Americas, many of whom are based on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, testing the quality of oil.

The company, whose US office is in Houston, said because of the failure of telecommunications and the difficulty of reaching the rigs it was impossible to know whether the employees had survived. "But it's now been a week and we haven't heard anything. It doesn't look too good," said a spokesman.

The hurricane has damaged or displaced an estimated 58 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the American Petroleum Institute has said. Of these about 30 rigs have been reported lost.

http://www.money.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/09/06/cnitek06.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/09/06/ixfrontcity.html

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Wow 58 rigs gone. That will take along time to replace. Why did they ride the hurricane out.

[Shoshana]

^ I was under the impression that rigs were always evacuated when under threat from a hurricane....

[Mac]

Wow 58 rigs gone. That will take along time to replace. Why did they ride the hurricane out.

I don't know. Maybe they did evacuate some of the rigs. But they may have been caught by surprise too. Katrina wasn't expected to make it that far into the Gulf. She was forecasted to turn north shortly after crossing southern Florida. And it didn't take her too long to intensify to a major hurricane once she emerged in the Gulf. They may have had a very small window of opportunity to evacuate the rigs and simply missed it.

That's my best guess.

[Eye10TX]

I'm not sure that number of rigs is quite right. Here's what tonight's HouChron article said:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mp ... gy/3340996

Excerpt:

~~~~~~~
...."Over the weekend the Coast Guard reported that 21 offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were swamped by the storm, while 20 rigs were either damaged or are still missing.

All together, 265 platforms and rigs remain evacuated in the Gulf, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

A little more than 1 million barrels a day of oil production, or 70 percent of daily average amount, and 5.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas production per day, or 54 percent of daily average in the Gulf of Mexico, remain shut in as of Monday, the agency reported." ....
~~~~~~~~

[Mac]

I'm not sure that number of rigs is quite right. Here's what tonight's HouChron article said:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mp ... gy/3340996

Excerpt:

~~~~~~~
...."Over the weekend the Coast Guard reported that 21 offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were swamped by the storm, while 20 rigs were either damaged or are still missing.

All together, 265 platforms and rigs remain evacuated in the Gulf, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

A little more than 1 million barrels a day of oil production, or 70 percent of daily average amount, and 5.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas production per day, or 54 percent of daily average in the Gulf of Mexico, remain shut in as of Monday, the agency reported." ....
~~~~~~~~

Well, both are fairly reliable sources. I Googled it to see what I could find. Some news agencies are reporting 30 rigs lost, and some are reporting 20 rigs lost. Not all that surprising, I guess. Accurate information seems hard to come by these days. Either way, though, it's bad.

[Wacahootaman]

Not sure what a "rig" is. The platforms are those hundreds of million dollar mini islands. Maybe there are smaller unmanned "rigs" out there. I donno

[Mac]

Not sure what a "rig" is. The platforms are those hundreds of million dollar mini islands. Maybe there are smaller unmanned "rigs" out there. I donno

Platform = Rig