Oil firms evacuating US Gulf of Mexico staff as hurricane threat rises

(Reuters) -U.S. oil producers on Monday were scrambling to evacuate staff from Gulf of Mexico oil production platforms as forecasters predicted the second major hurricane in two weeks could tear through offshore oil producing fields.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said a potential Tropical Cyclone System Nine near the western tip of Cuba was expected to develop into a hurricane on Wednesday and intensify in the next 72 hours it moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

It could become a major hurricane when it reaches the northeastern Gulf Coast on Thursday, bringing the "risk of life-threatening storm surge and damaging hurricane-force winds" to the northern and northeast Gulf Coast, according to the NHC.

Storm path attribution: LSEG

Chevron, Shell and Equinor have begun evacuating staff from offshore facilities, the companies said.

Chevron was evacuating nonessential personnel from all Gulf of Mexico platforms, including Anchor, Big Foot, Blind Faith, Jack/St. Malo, Petronius and Tahiti. Equinor said it was evacuating non-essential staff from its Titan platform.

Shell has shut in production at its Stones platform and curtailed production at its Appomattox facilities as a precautionary measure, along with evacuating non-essential staff from its assets in the Mars Corridor.

Both companies said that these decisions had not yet impacted their production.

The next name on the list of named storms is Helene, and according to private weather forecaster AccuWeather, it could make landfall later this week as a Category 3 hurricane and potentially strengthen into a Category 4.

(Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona, Gary McWilliams and Aurora Ellis)