Oil prices slip as Hurricane Laura's blow unlikely to have sustained impact

By Laura Sanicola

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices eased on Thursday as the market expected a quick recovery for production platforms shuttered ahead of a hurricane that churned through the Gulf of Mexico and slammed Louisiana.

Brent crude futures for October, which expire on Friday, fell 55 cents, or 1.2%, to settle at $45.09 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 35 cents or 0.8% to $43.04 a barrel.

The storm hit Louisiana early Thursday with 150 mile-per-hour (240 kph) winds, damaging buildings, knocking down trees and cutting power to more than 400,000 people in Louisiana and Texas. Its storm surge was less than predicted, sparing inland plants from feared flooding.

Oil producers on Tuesday had shut 1.56 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude output, or 84% of the Gulf of Mexico's production, evacuating 310 offshore facilities.

BP said Thursday it was already preparing to return to its company-operated facilities in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico to inspect for any potential damage from the storm.

At the same time, refiners that convert nearly 2.33 million bpd of crude oil into fuel, and account for about 12% of U.S. processing, halted operations.

"On the one hand refinery shutdowns reduced the demand for crude oil, but at the same time Gulf of Mexico production was shut in, nearly offsetting each other," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston.

Exxon Mobil Corp said it was contacting employees of its 369,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery and chemical plant in Beaumont, Texas, and preparing a preliminary tally of damages. The large plant was one of six plants along the Gulf Coast's refinery row that shut this week ahead of the storm.

"These guys have gone through these drills many times," said Jennifer Rowland, senior analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis. "They know how to turn those units down and get them back up within a number of days...it shouldn’t be that big of an impact,” she added.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York, Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Sonali Paul and Koustav Samanta; editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio)