BHP Billiton, Australia's biggest oil and gas producer, has lead the way by shutting down and evacuating staff from its $1.1 billion Neptune oil project, in the Gulf of Mexico, as Hurricane Ike continues to hurtle towards the region.
The Hurricane is expected to move through the energy-rich region in the next couple of days, just missing the largest concentration of platforms before heading onshore near the refining hub of Corpus Chrsti, Texas.
Ike smashed Cuba, on Tuesday, with winds of up to 80 mph. The Hurricane is currently measured as a Category 1 on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale, but it is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane before striking the Texas Coast.
The mass rig exodus is the second storm-related wave of offshore platform evacuations and production shutdowns, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the last couple of weeks.
The region is home to a combination of both a quarter of U.S. crude oil, and 15% of U.S. natural gas production. A host of the nation's oil refineries also stretch seemingly endlessly, like a spill, along the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to Texas.
Emma Meade, a Melbourne-based spokesman for BHP, said on Tuesday: 'We have evacuated all non-essential personnel from the Gulf and shut-in production at Neptune.' Output from the Neptune project only began back in July.
BHP is, of course, not alone in reacting pro-actively to Ike. The U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) reported that 78% of the 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil produced in the Gulf was shut down as of Tuesday.
As a consequence of the supply-shutting tag team of Hurricane's Gustav and Ike, 65% of the 7.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in natural gas produced in the Gulf has also been shut, leaving the production of the two commodities running at a relative trickle.
Although the Hurricane is expected to bypass key production facilities ExxonMobil is also taking no chances and has said that it would be evacuating an undisclosed number of workers from offshore Gulf facilities that could be in the storm's path.
Mickey Driver, a spokesman for Chevron, said likewise: 'We're glad that Ike is going a little bit further south of the production areas.
'However, we're carefully watching Ike and preparing accordingly,' he added.
Peter Beutel, energy analyst at Cameron Hanover, New Canaan, Connecticut, said: 'There's still the possibility that Ike could be a real devil and if nothing else cause additional precautionary evacuations and shutdowns.'