US oil firms restart production shut by Dean

HOUSTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) US oil companies on Monday began to restart Gulf of Mexico production shut by Hurricane Dean on forecasts the storm would miss US offshore installations.

The US Minerals Management Service reported 41,967 barrels per day of oil output had been shut due to the storm, out of 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) normally.

Around 100 million cubic feet per day of natural gas output was shut, out of 7.7 billion cubic feet per day, the MMS said.

Most of the shut production was from Shell Oil Co.

, which said it temporarily stopped producing a total of 39,000 bpd in oil and 97.5 million cubic feet daily of natural gas as of yesterday.

But Shell said it was beginning to restart production shut ahead of Dean.

Exxon Mobil Corp was returning non-essential workers to Gulf of Mexico platforms on Monday, the company said.

A third-party producer's shutdown of a platform temporarily cut 2,100 barrels per day (bpd) in oil production and 21 million cubic feet per day in natural gas output, Exxon said in a statement.

Natural gas producer Apache Corp said it was shutting 5 million cubic feet per day in natural gas production on Monday and an additonal 41 million cubic feet on Monday as the platforms involved lacked equipment to close off production automatically if microwave communication is lost.

BP Plc planned to keep nonessential workers onshore until the company was sure Dean was following its forecast path, said BP spokesman Nicola Montorsi.

''Once the risk to deviate north is over, we'll look at taking them back out,'' Montorsi said.

In addition to BP, Anadarko Petroleum Corp , Chevron Corp , ConocoPhillips , ENI Petroleum Co Inc , Marathon Oil Corp. , Murphy Oil Corp.

and Total Petrochemicals said they evacuated nonessential workers but did not shut production.

Drillers Nabors Industries Ltd , Noble Corp. and BHP Billiton said on Monday workers were moved to safety from deepwater rigs off the US and Mexican coasts.

Some rigs also were moved out of harm's way.

Dean was forecast to strike the Yucatan Peninsula early on Tuesday, cross the Bay of Campeche and make final landfall on the east coast of Mexico by Thursday.

Mexican state oil company Pemex shut 2.65 million bpd of oil production and 2.634 billion cubic feet per day in natural gas output as Dean barrels toward its Bay of Campeche region.

Reuters CS VP0445