Katrina takes a terrible toll

Hurricane Katrina has shut in most of the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production and inflicted widespread damage to the region's oil infrastructure. Anne Feltus reports

ON 23 AUGUST, a tropical depression formed over the southeastern Bahamas. By the morning of 26 August, the storm, upgraded to a hurricane, had crossed southern Florida and entered the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), the most active oil and gas producing province in the US. Two days later, Hurricane Katrina reached Category-5 status – the most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane-measurement scale – generating sustained winds as high as 175 miles an hour before it slammed into the Louisiana-Mississippi coast. The approach of the storm prompted the evacuation of workers from more than 700 platforms and rigs, taking more than 90% of the GoM's oil production and 83% of its gas output offline. As they