BP pulls non-essential staff from Argos, Atlantis and Mad Dog platforms
The move follows Shell's full evacuation and shutdown at five Gulf of Mexico platforms a day earlier
Published
BP has removed non-essential personnel from its Argos, Atlantis and Mad Dog platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
The move comes a day after Shell evacuated and shut in five platforms, Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Vito and Appomattox, as a storm approached. Shell had already pulled non-essential staff from its Stones platform before that shutdown. On Tuesday, Shell had named six Gulf of Mexico platforms it was watching as Invest 92L developed, saying at the time that the monitoring was precautionary only and had no other effect on its operations.
Argos produces up to 140,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day through a subsea system at a water depth of 4,500 feet, according to BP. Atlantis has capacity of about 200,000 barrels of oil and 180 million cubic feet of gas a day, BP says, while Mad Dog's floating production platform can produce up to 140,000 gross barrels of crude a day.
BP's move is a step short of the full shut-in Shell carried out, but it points to the same storm system now pushing more than one Gulf operator into precautionary staffing cuts. If BP follows with production curtailments of its own, that would add to the deepwater barrels already pulled offline by Shell's shutdown, widening the hit to US Gulf crude supply.