British oil giant BP PLC and the Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced on Friday they would evacuate their employees from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico due to the approaching tropic storm Isaac, MarketWatch has reported.
Meteorologists believe the tropical storm could strengthen into a hurricane over the weekend.
A Shell spokesman said part of the employees were presently being evacuated from platforms and all drilling has stopped.
BP has reported it is evacuating all of its employees from the Thunder Horse platform, which has a drilling capacity of 250,000 barrels of oil per day.
Oil markets, however, have not waivered that much over the possible slowdown of production in the region because of the tropical storm. October futures as of 18:43 GMT on WTI (Light Sweet Crude Oil) dropped by $0.47 to $95.82 per barrel, whereas the price for October futures on Brent dropped 1.6 percent to $113.17 per barrel.
