FYI, "increases" from the GOM are looking less likely for the next... year, two, or?

(hey, I thought we dodged a bullet... guess it could have been worse!)

63 offshore platforms destroyed by Rita
Tue Oct 4, 2005 02:06 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A total of 63 offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were destroyed by Hurricane Rita and a further 30 fixed platforms were damaged, the U.S. Interior Department said on Tuesday.

In a briefing on the damage done by Rita, the department also said that 13 offshore rigs were adrift, one was destroyed, 10 were damaged and three rigs were unaccounted for.

Rita hit the Texas-Louisiana border on September 24 with winds of 120 mph.

Here's 140,000 bbl/day 156mmcf current production and 80,000 bbl/day of increase now held off until at least second half next year:

Shell's Mars platform to be down until 2H 2006 - Enbridge

HOUSTON (MarketWatch) -- The key Mars oil and natural gas production platform in the Gulf of Mexico probably won't be back on line until the second half of 2006, an executive with Enbridge Inc. said Tuesday.

The platform is majority owned and operated by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), but Enbridge pipelines move the gas produced there. Two other nearby Shell platforms - Ursa and Mensa - will be back up in November, said Doug Krenz, vice president for gas transportation at Enbridge.

"We expect to have the production back up in November at Ursa and Mensa," Krenz said in a presentation to investors. "Mars is a little longer-term fix, probably second half of next year."  http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?siteid=mktw&dist=moreover&guid={76E323E6-E597-4DD1-98E8-88AA7E05354A}

More data:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A total of 108 low producing oil and natural gas offshore platforms were destroyed by hurricanes Rita and Katrina and likely will not be rebuilt, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said on Tuesday.

She said the destroyed platforms account for about 1.5 percent of oil output in the Gulf of Mexico and 0.7 percent of Gulf natural gas production.

Separately, the head of the Minerals Management Service said the damage done to underwater pipelines by the two hurricanes was not as severe as the damage done from mudslides caused by Hurricane Ivan last year.

"We don't think we have as much damage," said MMS director Johnnie Burton.

The DOE's Office of Electricity, Delivery and Energy Reliability has a much more comprehensive listing of damage to the GOM infrastructure in today's report, including numbers for both Rita and Katrina, comparing to Ivan - worth a gander:

http://electricity.doe.gov/documents/gulfcoast_report_100405.pdf

Point of interest: the "to-date" cumulative shut in for the two recent storms now exceeds that of the entire period of Ivan shut-in from September 04 through Feb 05.

... and the shut in levels are still way-way ...