UPDATE: About 60% Of Gulf Oil Production Still Offline Due To Storm

--About 61.4% of the oil production and 46% of the natural-gas production in the region remained shut in.

--Thousands of people without power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas.

--Major Gulf oil, gas producers waiting for weather to improve to restart operations.

(Updates to rewrite top of the story, adds amount of production that remains shut in and background about platforms and companies throughout.)

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--A large part the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production remained offline Monday as sea conditions and high winds delayed the deployment of workers and the restarting of production of hundreds of platforms that were evacuated last week ahead of Storm Lee.

After making landfall Sunday morning near Lafayette, La., and bringing torrential rains, the slow-moving storm was expected to continue to draw moisture from the Gulf as it gradually drifts north to drench the Appalachian mountains and Tennessee River valley.

The U.S. government said that about 61.4% of the oil production and 46% of the natural-gas production in the region remained shut in as of Monday. That amounts to about 859,000 barrels of oil per day and 2.44 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The amount of oil and gas output that remained shut-in Monday was slightly higher than Sunday, when the government said about 60.2% of the oil production and 44.3% of natural gas production remained offline.

Lee also left thousands of people without power in the region. About 6,265 customers in Louisiana, 990 in Mississippi, 1,292 in Texas and 383 in Arkansas were without power as of Sunday evening, according to major utility Entergy Corp. (ETR).

"In an ongoing battle with Tropical Storm Lee, Entergy crews continued restoration work as the storm's heavy squalls and winds slowly moved through Louisiana and Mississippi, and its effects were felt across the utility's four-state service territory," the company said in a press release.

Major Gulf producers such as Chevron Corp. (CVX), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), Apache Corp. (APA) and BP PLC (BP) said Sunday that extreme weather was putting a break in their efforts to send workers back and restart production. BP said it expected to start sending workers back Tuesday morning to several platforms that have evacuated last week. The oil giant shut productions at Mad Dog, Holstein, Atlantis, Nakika, Thunderhorse, Pompano, Horn Mountain and Marlin.

Mad Dog, Thunderhorse and Nakika are three of the Gulf's six largest production platforms, with combined output of equal to about 367,000 barrels of oil per day.

The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 30% of all U.S. oil production and about 7% of U.S. natural gas production.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port said tanker offloading remained halted as of Monday morning because of poor sea conditions. LOOP is a deep-water port off Louisiana that provides tanker offloading and receives oil from underwater pipelines. The port, however, continues to make deliveries to customers from its onshore storage facilities, according to its website. Tanker offloading was halted Friday ahead of the storm.

-By Isabel Ordonez, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9207; isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

via online.wsj.com