Gulf Ike damage may go up few thousand bbls

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Damage assessments from Hurricane Ike will likely climb a "few thousand" barrels in oil and 10 million cubic feet per day in natural gas production lost due to destroyed platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, said the regional director for the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

"I don't think we'll see many other large increases," Lars Herbst, MMS Gulf regional director, told Reuters. "I think we're talking a few thousand (barrels) more on the oil and 10 million on the gas, I'm guessing."

As of Thursday, the MMS found Hurricane Ike had destroyed 49 platforms producing 13,000 barrels per day in crude oil and 84 million cubic feet in natural gas.

Restoring all Gulf of Mexico production shut by Hurricane Ike could take eight weeks, he said.

"If we're talking getting all the way back, we're talking eight weeks," Herbst said.

As of Monday, the MMS said 76.6 percent of 1.3 million barrels of crude oil and 65.5 percent of 7.4 billion cubic feet in natural gas taken daily from the Gulf remains shut, nine days after Hurricane Ike roared ashore at the Houston energy hub.

Herbst declined to say when he thought most or a majority of production will be restored in the U.S.-regulated energy production areas in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for a quarter of U.S. oil output and 15 percent of national natural gas production.

Working around the damage to major transmission pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico is the "major bottleneck" to oil and natural gas production recovery from Hurricane Ike, he said.

"What we saw from (Hurricane) Gustav was onshore damage," Herbst said. "Ike is more actual damage (like) something struck the pipeline or a platform is down."

It could take "weeks" to repair damage to the pipelines, he said. Natural gas lines would likely be repaired first and then crude lines, he added.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba, editing by Gene Ramos)