Independence Hub gas platform seen back late Sat.

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - The huge Independence Hub natural gas production platform in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to return to service late Saturday following a planned four day maintenance outage, the platform's majority owner Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD.N) said Thursday.

The platform, the deepest production platform in the Gulf and the largest offshore natural gas processing facility, shut late Tuesday for evaluation of repairs that were done last month, a company spokesman said.

The spokesman said previously the company had expected to do the work last week.

The platform shut in early April for a two-month shutdown after a leak was discovered on an associated pipeline.

It has a full production capacity of about 1 billion cubic feet per day, or about 12 percent of U.S. offshore natural gas production in the Gulf.

Following the work, the company said it expects volumes to ramp up quickly to more than 800 million cubic feet per day.

Enterprise owns the Independence Trail pipeline, whose leak caused the April outage, and is 80 percent owner of the platform, with Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc owning the remaining 20 percent.

The platform is operated by Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC.N). (Reporting by Eileen Moustakis; Editing by Marguerita Choy)