THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Shell, BP Restart Oil Production At Na Kika Pipeline After Repairs: “DALLAS -- Oil production from the giant Na Kika platform in the Gulf of Mexico resumed Monday morning after a pipeline damaged by Hurricane Ivan was fixed.” (ShellNews.net)

By RUSSELL GOLD;

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

October 26, 2004

DALLAS -- Oil production from the giant Na Kika platform in the Gulf of Mexico resumed Monday morning after a pipeline damaged by Hurricane Ivan was fixed.

A spokeswoman for BP PLC, which owns 50% of the platform, said repairs were completed on the pipeline and production should be back to normal by Wednesday. Before the hurricane, Na Kika was producing 110,000 barrels of so-called sweet crude per day. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group unit Shell Exploration & Production owns the other 50% of Na Kika and also owns the repaired pipeline.

The platform's production of 325 million cubic feet of natural gas a day had already been restarted.

The federal Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore oil and gas production, reported on Monday afternoon that 25.1% of oil production and 12.3% of natural gas production in the gulf remained "shut-in" due to storm damage. So far, more than 41.6 million barrels of oil equivalent, a measure of both oil and gas output, has been hampered by the storm in the gulf, a vital producing region for the U.S. That is more than 3% of the annual output from the gulf.

BP, one of the largest deepwater operators in the gulf, is still waiting for pipeline repairs before restarting oil production at Marlin and Horn Mountain, two other large producing platforms. The spokeswoman says she expects to restart production by the end of October. Other repairs to pipelines may take several more months.

The year-old Na Kika is located about 140 miles southeast of New Orleans in 6,300 feet of water.

Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com