?When hurricanes strike, there are rig and platform evacuations offshore the Gulf Coast and shut-in production. At last Minerals Management Service count, 54 production facilities were destroyed when Hurricane Ike traveled through the Gulf of Mexico in early September. And BP’s Mad Dog platform lost its derrick.

Devon Energy Corp. lost two production platforms in Eugene Island. Ironically, these had survived Katrina and Rita in 2005, but the company, wanting to be prudent, spent about $5 million to upgrade them for the next big storm. Now they are gone, as well as about 1,200 barrels a day of production that Devon operated.

“We were so proud of the fact that we recognized their vulnerability, and we proactively?raised their decks by another 14 feet. Lo and behold, a loose drilling platform came through and took them out,” says spokesman Chip Minty.

Ike wreaked havoc?onshore as well, traveling through northwestern Louisiana where the Haynesville/Bossier play is. GMX Resources Inc. of Oklahoma City reports that three of its?Haynesville horizontal spuds have been delayed to this quarter due to Ike.

“We are also experiencing delays in shipments of critical materials, causing the delay of two proposed Haynesville horizontal wells,” the company reports. This will move production from three planned fourth-quarter wells to an early 2009 time frame.

Devon Energy also suffered damage to its downtown Houston offices. The E&P has about 1,200 employees in Houston. The roof of one of the buildings was peeled back and the building suffered severe water and wind damage to the top two floors. There was water damage to the two floors below those as well.

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