[Goldfisch]

Oil Rises as Hurricane Moves Toward Platforms in Gulf of Mexico

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil futures rose as the approach of Hurricane Ivan disrupted production and the arrival of shipments in the Gulf of Mexico, where a quarter of U.S. oil and natural gas is pumped.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group said it plans to complete evacuations today that will idle 272,000 barrels of daily oil output. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the biggest U.S. oil import terminal, said it will stop offloading tankers today. States along the Gulf receive more than half of U.S. oil imports and are home to 50 percent of the nation's refining capacity.

``There is a real concern about the damage it will do and the direction it will take in the Gulf,'' said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA Inc. in New York. ``At a time when inventories are getting tight we are now going to see a disruption in production and can only hope that the platforms will be able to reopen quickly.''

Crude oil for October delivery was up $1.19, or 2.8 percent, at $44 a barrel at 10:13 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices, which were down 11 percent from the record of $49.40 a barrel reached on Aug. 20, are 56 percent higher than a year ago.

In London, the October Brent crude-oil futures contract was up $1.03, or 2.6 percent, at $41.23 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange.

Ivan, with maximum sustained winds near 160 miles (257 kilometers) per hour, was upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane late yesterday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The hurricane's center was located about 120 miles south-southeast of the western tip of Cuba at 5 a.m. New York time today. The storm may hit the U.S. near the Alabama-Florida border early Thursday, forecasters said.

Platform Evacuations

Shell said that shutdowns of platforms, including Mars, Ram Powell, Ursa and Main Pass 252, also will idle 880 million cubic feet of daily natural-gas production, a U.S. Shell unit said on its Web site. Preparations are under way to remove workers from offshore operations in the central Gulf, the company said.

Natural gas for October delivery was up 45 cents, or 9.9 percent, at $5.02 per million British thermal units in New York.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, located about 20 miles off the state's coast, handles about 1 million barrels of crude oil a day. It consists of mooring buoys, platforms and pipelines.

``Conditions should be unworkable by tonight,'' said Mark Bugg, scheduling manager at New Orleans-based Loop LLC, the port operator. ``The offshore part of our operations will shut but we'll continue to ship to refiners from our storage. We may have to close all of our operations depending on the track it takes,'' Bugg said.

U.S. Stockpiles

The Energy Department reported last week that U.S. crude oil supplies declined 1.4 million barrels to 285.7 million in the week ended Sept. 3, the sixth straight decline. Stockpiles were at the lowest level since the week ended March 12.

Supplies probably declined by 1 million barrels last week, according to the median of forecasts by seven analysts in a Bloomberg survey before the department's report Wednesday.

Ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, producer of about 40 percent of the world's oil, gather Wednesday in Vienna to consider raising the group's official output limits and price targets.

OPEC production rose 360,000 barrels a day to an average of 29.92 million a day in August, reaching a 25-year high for a second month, according to Bloomberg data.

``I believe today OPEC is almost producing the maximum,'' Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said in Vienna. ``We don't believe there is a shortage of crude oil.''

OPEC members have agreed to increase their target range for oil, an Iranian official said. Most of them wanted an increase to $30 a barrel, said the Iranian oil ministry's Petroenergy Information Network, citing Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Iran's OPEC governor.

The official target of $22 to $28 a barrel is based on an index comprising seven blends of crude oil. Prices have exceeded the target range all year.