BP and Shell on Friday said they had begun evacuating offshore oil facilities as two tropical cyclones head toward the U.S Gulf of Mexico, with the already active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season heating up further.
BP said it had begun the process of evacuating personnel from offshore platforms and drilling rigs, while also beginning to shut-in production at its four operated platforms in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the Thunder Horse, Atlantis, Mad Dog and Na Kika.
Shell said it had started to reduce non-essential personnel on some of its offshore facilities. It said there was currently no effect on production and work was underway to secure drilling operations.
The tropical cyclones churning toward the Gulf of Mexico could both could make landfall as hurricanes next week, an extremely rare event that could cause massive disruption from Texas to the Florida Panhandle.
(Reporting by Liz Hampton; editing by Diane Craft and Tom Brown)