⁍ Energy producers had shut about half the offshore region’s oil and natural gas output.

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⁍ Repeated storm shutdowns this year have been costly for oil and gas producers.

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⁍ U.S. oil futures CLc1 were off 5% on Wednesday as energy demand has been crushed by the pandemic.

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– Energy firms have shut nearly half of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil and natural gas production as Hurricane Zeta approaches, Reuters reports. Some 157 offshore facilities have been evacuated, including BP, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Murphy Oil. Oil and gas ports along the Gulf Coast have been closed by the Coast Guard. The storm, the 11th named storm of the year, is forecast to crash into Louisiana later today as a ‘significant hurricane’ with winds of up to 90 miles per hour. Zeta is the seventh named storm of the year to affect energy producers along the Gulf Coast. The loss of millions of barrels of oil production lost from the storms have not impacted markets. US oil futures dropped 5% on Wednesday as energy demand has been crushed by the pandemic and crude oil supplies in storage rose. Gulf Coast refiners, which had not already halted operations, were planning to run through the storm. An onshore gas processing plant removed its workers on Tuesday, and two Louisiana oil-processing facilities have been idled since storms earlier this year.