The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday said that the country’s crude oil production would decline by 200,000 bpd to 11.08 million bpd in 2021. The decline is larger than a drop of 160,000 bpd that the agency previously anticipated, mostly due to Hurricane Ida, which shut the majority of oil and gas output in the Gulf of Mexico since late August.
The storm forced the shutdown of more than 90% of crude output in the offshore Gulf of Mexico. According to the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), more than 75% of offshore crude oil and natural gas output in the region remained offline as of Wednesday, ten days after Ida’s landfall.
Restarts activities have been slowed by damages to onshore processing plants and offshore oil and gas transfer facilities. At the same time, a fuel shortage has hindered companies’ ability in redeploying offshore workers by helicopters.
The EIA estimated that oil production in the US Gulf of Mexico averaged 1.5 million bpd in August, dropping 300,000 million bpd from July. The agency expects production to gradually return to an average of 1.2 million bpd in September and further to 1.7 million bpd in the fourth quarter.
