Mexican state oil company Pemex on Sunday evacuated thousands of oil workers from the Gulf of Mexico and warned it might close up to 2.2m barrels a day of crude oil production as the powerful hurricane approached.
Pemex said it was evacuating 13,360 workers – most of its workforce in the area - and that it might order the ”total closure of the oil wells” in the Cantarell oil field and other fields.
Oil prices rallied last week on fears that Dean might disrupt oil and natural gas production and damage refineries. US oil futures rose almost $1 to $71.98 a barrel.
The US oil market is super-sensitive to hurricanes since 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed hundreds of oil rigs and badly damaged US several refineries.
Hurricane Dean was on Sunday night battering Jamaica with winds up to 250 kilometers per hour.
The US National Hurricane Center forecast Dean would cross the Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula on Tuesday and hit the Mexican oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico early Wednesday.
Daniel Guertin, of Lehman Brothers in New York, said that on the current track there should not be a significant damage risk to the US oil and natural oil platforms.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for the Cayman islands and tropical storm warnings for parts of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
The US government advised people in south Texas to prepare for possible evacuations.
”If I was a Texas resident, particularly along the southeast coast, I would make sure I was ready,” said David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ”This is not a time to be complacent.”
The storm could shift course and hit the region around Brownsville, Texas, along the state’s southeastern coast, Mr Paulison said. In that area, he said there are 400,000 people, many in substandard housing, who lack their own transportation.
