Hurricane Alex, the season's first hurricane, drenched the Texas-Mexico border on Thursday as it made landfall as a Category 2 storm, spawning tornadoes and flooding towns, but it spared US oil wells before weakening to a tropical storm.
Forecasters say the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season could be the worst since 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma caused havoc in the Gulf Coast, damaging oil rigs and refineries and forcing sharp cuts in production.
The hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30 and often affects the Gulf of Mexico, home to about 30 per cent of US oil production, 11 per cent of natural gas production, and more than 43 per cent of US refinery capacity.
By Wednesday, companies had shut in 421,350 barrels per day (bpd) of offshore oil production in preparation for Alex, for a total loss of over 817,000 barrel over the past two days, according to the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. About 919 million cubic feet per day of natural gas had been shut in on Wednesday, for a two-day loss of 1.5 billion cubic feet, the data showed.
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