By Bruce Nichols
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Shell Oil shut subsea production at two platforms and BP <:BP.LO:>evacuated some personnel from three Gulf of Mexico platforms due to the threat of tropical depression Alex, the companies said on Sunday.
Subsea production at Shell's Auger and Brutus platforms was shut, a website posting said. Personnel not essential to operations were evacuated from BP's Atlantis, Mad Dog and Holstein platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, a recorded telephone message said.
A Shell spokesman declined to say how much oil and gas production was affected by the decisions involving Auger and Brutus.
BP said no output was lost due to evacuations of workers.
All five platforms are in deepwater areas of the Gulf, far offshore and on the northern edge of some forecasters' projected tracks for Alex.
Some weather models Sunday moved the track a bit farther north than earlier projections, although most still had the storm hitting land in eastern Mexico or far south Texas.
Officials overseeing the effort to contain and clean up the oil spill from BP's blown-out Macondo well said they did not expect the storm to affect the work.
The website posting said Shell would continue evacuations of personnel from deepwater operations in the southwestern Gulf that began Saturday, bringing another 35 workers to shore for a total of 430 pulled in to avoid Alex.
Shell said it was leaving 1,100 workers in place at installations in the Gulf.
"We will continue to monitor this system closely and respond to further developments," the Shell web posting said.
Other Gulf operators Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Anadarko said they were monitoring the storm, but had not shut production or evacuated personnel as of Sunday afternoon.
Shell's website lists Auger's capacity at 101,000 barrels of oil and 415 million cubic feet of gas per day and Brutus' at 110,000 bpd of oil and 150 Mmcfd of gas, but it was unclear whether either was currently producing at those levels.
Shell's Perdido deepwater development is located farther west and south than Auger and Brutus, and appears more in the likely path of Alex.
Perdido is about 200 miles east of Brownsville, Texas. Auger is situated 255 miles southeast of Houston, and Brutus about 165 miles southwest of New Orleans.
(Reporting by Bruce Nichols; Editing by Martin Golan and Jan Paschal)
