America's oil output rose by an estimated 900,000 barrels per day last week to reach 10.9 million barrels daily as production continued to recover from precautionary shutdowns deployed on the US Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Laura, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th September, 2020) America's oil output rose by an estimated 900,000 barrels per day last week to reach 10.9 million barrels daily as production continued to recover from precautionary shutdowns deployed on the US Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Laura, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed.
The EIA estimated a record high crude production of 13.1 million barrels per day in mid-March as the United States stood as the world's largest oil producer. In its latest update for the week ended September 11, the agency cited daily production at 2.2 million barrels below that high.
In the previous week to September 4, the EIA estimated oil production at 10 million barrels daily, accounting for outages in the aftermath of Laura as most of the production facilities on the Gulf of Mexico were shut as a precaution.
Laura, one of the strongest US hurricanes in more than a century, made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, as a Category 4 hurricane on August 27. The storm, which killed at least 25 people and damaged countless property, also scored a near-direct hit on one refinery in Louisiana processing 769,000 barrels per day of crude.
Since that storm, however, another called Hurricane Sally, made landfall on the northern side of the Gulf Coast on Wednesday, resulting in another widespread shutdown of oil and gas production. As of Tuesday, some 27 percent of US oil production capacity and 28 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf has been shuttered, the Interior Department said.
The National Hurricane Center said earlier on Tuesday that Sally, the 18th named storm in the Atlantic this year, could bring "extreme life-threatening" and historic floods.
