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Katrina put a hit on Gulf oil industry

OFF PORT FOURCHON, La. — Some six miles from shore, the stunted remains of a 50-foot oil production platform protrude from the water at an awkward angle. They are surrounded by the flat, glassy surface of a calm Gulf of Mexico.

"The rest of it is below the water, underneath us," says Steve Shook, veteran charter boat captain and diver. Passengers peer over the side and detect the vague outlines of twisted metal in the depths.

Nearby, at another drilling site, natural gas froths on the surface where a feeder line was ruptured. Shook steers upwind to avoid the smell and the risk of combustion.

The sea was anything but calm when Hurricane Katrina moved through here; it was a maelstrom. In parts of the Gulf, the storm was a Category 5 when it arrived on the night of Aug. 28 and morning of Aug. 29, with sustained winds of 175 mph.

Waves, as high as 35 feet locals say, pounded and demolished some oil platforms as the storm barreled through the offshore oil patch on its path to the coast. Water swept ashore, levees broke and key refineries were ravaged.

Within hours, drivers thousands of miles away felt the effect, as waves of higher gas prices hit the pumps.

According to Oil Daily, a bible of the petroleum business, in the days after the deluge, processing of petroleum in the United States dropped by 2 million barrels per day — 84 million gallons — about 12 percent of normal intake.

Some refineries have since returned to full or partial production, but four major facilities — three in Louisiana and one in Mississippi — are believed to be badly damaged and may not be online for weeks or months. Experts expect the price of gasoline to decline gradually, but it probably will be inflated by Katrina well into next year.

"There's plenty of damage out there to the platforms, but what makes this storm different is what happened to the refineries on shore," says Mark Pregeant, operations manager for Grand Isle Shipyards, a large maritime construction company that will help rebuild the rigs. "It's a mess."

A 60-mile boat tour through offshore oil- and gas-producing sectors reveal an abandoned seascape. Most rigs survived, especially the newer ones. But some of the older, smaller rigs have disappeared. The ones that are simply unmanned pumping stations are called "China rigs," because there are so many.

"That China rig broke right off," says Shook, pointing at a bare patch of water that has been marked by small caution buoys. "Divers will need to go down and cap those wells."

Pregeant talks about one drilling sector that was particularly hard hit.

"Out of 13 platforms, six were lost altogether and two more are leaning," he says. "I think they'll abandon that sector altogether."

Others platforms are still standing, but their enclosed structures have been ripped as if they were made of paper. Metal piping is coiled up in balls, like string. Steel stanchions 24 to 36 inches are snapped in half.

The work crews on the rigs were evacuated before Katrina arrived, and in the sectors off Port Fourchon almost no one is back aboard the ones still standing. The rigs stand in the water like empty gray metal watchtowers, one after the other.

In part, according to Shook, it is because they don't have electrical power. But the main reason is what lies along the bottom of the Gulf.

"There is a network of pipelines going every which way under here," Shook says. Shut-off valves were closed before Katrina hit in order to avoid spills, "but (the lines) are gonna have to be checked for breaks before they start pumpin' again."

That work is already under way. A battered, rusting boat named the Sea Cat is anchored in about 35 feet of water next to a Chevron rig in the Grand Isle-25 drilling sector, about four miles out to sea.

Jeff Pogue, 37, a diver with Global industries of New Orleans, pulls a bright yellow helmet over his wet suit and oxygen tank and jumps in. On board is a decompression chamber for deeper dives.

"We're doing inspections of lines and structures," says the boat captain, Ross Fengier. "We're looking for problems and reporting them. There are quite a few leaks all over."

Shook explains that while Pogue's equipment includes a digital camera on his helmet and a light, "a lot of it he has to do by touch because it's so muddy down there after the storm."

A distance away, in the Grand Isle-16 sector, welder Jimmy Kay, 41, of McComb, Miss., is already securing handrails ripped loose by the storm. Apart from that, the rig looks unscathed. The only sounds are that of his welding unit and the crackling radio of the boat.

Business owners here say it will be difficult to find the trained workers needed to inspect and rebuild the oil fields — divers, boat captains, welders.

"I figure I'll have to start looking overseas," says Pregeant, naming other oil-intensive areas around the globe where workers speak English — such as Aberdeen, Scotland, and the Philippines.

Farther offshore, in deeper water, larger, more modern drilling and pumping facilities fared differently. About half of the crude pumped from the floor of the Gulf is now produced by super rigs that can operate in thousands of feet of water.

British Petroleum's Thunder Horse, the largest oil production platform in the world and due to start operation soon, escaped serious harm. It is the size of four football fields, stands 20 stories tall, floats on the surface of the sea and sits 150 miles southeast of New Orleans.

The rig was thrown off kilter by Hurricane Dennis earlier this year and had to be righted. This time, it fared better.

"The steps we took to make it safe were effective," said BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell. "It was standing straight and tall when we returned."

But Shell Oil's superrig, Mars — 162 feet high and 1.5 acres on its most spacious level — stationed about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans took a harder hit and was badly damaged. Online photos show extensive damage. Pregeant said he believed the platform would take months to repair.

The story inland was also stark. The Coast Guard reported that at least 6.7 million gallons of fuel had spilled from refineries or tank farms on the Gulf Coast. That compares with 11 million gallons that gushed into Alaskan waters when the Exxon Valdez ruptured in 1989.

In Port Fourchon, about 70 miles south of New Orleans, authorities implemented an air canon to keep waterfowl from landing in waters laden with oil. Gulls, egrets and spoonbills stayed aloft, afraid to land, as the canon exploded with a loud pop every few seconds.

Travis Collins, 21, a worker for Source Environmental, a company participating in the cleanup, steered a launch within the boundaries of oil retention buoys and skimmed oil off the top.

"It isn't that bad a spill here," he said. "It shouldn't take that long to clean up."

Captain Shook disagreed. He pointed at a pile of dead oysters washed up on the shore and coated in oil. Foliage along the shore of the harbor was also contaminated.

"It's bad," he said.

Up the highway, inland about 20 miles, offshore oil field workers who had been evacuated from rigs two days before Katrina hit were gathered at a helicopter port. They were packed and ready to return to rigs that had escaped harm and were back in operation.

The population of the rigs — thousands of workers — is exclusively male, largely Southern and particularly Cajun. The men usually work 14 days on, with seven or 14 days off in between shifts. They get on and off by boat or copter, landing on helipads built on the larger rigs.

No alcohol is allowed. Television and taped movies are the main distractions between long work shifts. The local stores onshore where they are most likely to stop before going offshore feature large supplies of Playboy and Penthouse, and tattoo and fitness magazines. Cosmopolitan is hard to find.

The rigs are isolated and exposed to the elements.

Dan "Tadpole" Dworaszyk, 37, of New Iberia, La., a veteran of more than 15 years of offshore work, says veteran rig workers didn't get too concerned about the coming of hurricanes.

He said oil and drilling companies got them off in time. He also said that everyone employed on the rigs received survival training. This includes drills in what to do in case of fire, an explosion and other emergencies. Then with a wry smile he says:

"But mainly, they teach you how to pray."

John Lantigua writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: john_lantigua@pbpost.com