US offshore oil drillers Shell, Chevron and Equinor halted operations at facilities pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day on Thursday, citing an onshore pipeline leak that a port official said should take about a day to fix.
While the shut-ins are not expected to last more than a day or two, the number of facilities affected by the leak offered another example of how a relatively minor failure can affect a swath of U.S. energy infrastructure according to Reuters, which cited a person familiar who said that the shut-ins could halt about 600,000 barrels per day of oil production.
A flange connecting two pipelines onshore in Louisiana failed and caused about two barrels of oil to spill onto the ground, said Chett Chiasson, executive director of Greater Lafourche Port Commission.
The spill halted operation of the Mars and Amberjack Pipelines that serve several oil production platforms off the Louisiana coast.
The three are designed to produce up to 410,000 barrels of oil per day combined, according to data on the company's website.
Murphy Oil, which also uses the Mars pipeline for some of its Gulf of Mexico operations, could not provide immediately comment on its operations, a spokesperson said.
Shell's three platforms deliver Mars sour crude, a grade prized by oil refiners in the United States and Asia.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/600000-barrels-oil-output-shut-7-us-gulf-platforms-pipeline-outage
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