01:31 PM CDT on Monday, September 19, 2005

Alan Sayre / Associated Press

BATON ROUGE -- Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast and with Tropical Storm Rita threatening the Gulf of Mexico, more than half of the region's offshore oil production remained cut off from market Monday, a federal agency said.

Following a survey of 54 energy companies, the Minerals Management Service reported 83 of the 819 staffed production platforms in the Gulf were evacuated, compared with 84 on Friday.

Monday's shut-ins blocked 55.9%, or 837,648 barrels of oil, of the region's normal daily production of 1.5 million barrels. Also, 3.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or 33.8% of the Gulf's normal daily production of 10 billion cubic feet, were kept from market, the MMS said.

The agency said it was impossible to tell from its survey, which was not taken over the weekend, to determine how many platforms had been re-evacuated because of Rita's threat.

Since Katrina first threatened the Gulf on Aug. 26, 24.8 million barrels of oil have been shut off from production. That's 4.5% of the Gulf's annual normal production of 547.5 million barrels, the MMS said.

Platform evacuations since Aug. 26 have shut in 116 billion cubic feet of gas, or 3.2% of the region's normal annual production of 3.65 trillion cubic feet.

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On the Net: U.S. Minerals Management Service: http://www.mms.gov

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)