Sept 23 (Reuters) - U.S. oil producers on Monday were

scrambling to evacuate staff from Gulf of Mexico oil production

platforms as forecasters predicted the second major hurricane in

two weeks could tear through offshore oil producing fields.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said a potential Tropical

Cyclone System Nine near the western tip of Cuba was expected to

develop into a hurricane on Wednesday and intensify in the next

72 hours it moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

It could become a major hurricane when it reaches the

northeastern Gulf Coast on Thursday, bringing the "risk of

life-threatening storm surge and damaging hurricane-force winds"

to the northern and northeast Gulf Coast, according to the NHC.

Storm path attribution: LSEG

Chevron ( CVX ), Shell and Equinor ( EQNR ) have

begun evacuating staff from offshore facilities, the companies

said.

Chevron ( CVX ) was evacuating nonessential personnel from all

Gulf of Mexico platforms, including Anchor, Big Foot, Blind

Faith, Jack/St. Malo, Petronius and Tahiti. Equinor ( EQNR ) said it was

evacuating non-essential staff from its Titan platform.

Shell has shut in production at its Stones platform and

curtailed production at its Appomattox facilities as a

precautionary measure, along with evacuating non-essential staff

from its assets in the Mars Corridor.

Both companies said that these decisions had not yet

impacted their production.

The next name on the list of named storms is Helene, and

according to private weather forecaster AccuWeather, it could

make landfall later this week as a Category 3 hurricane and

potentially strengthen into a Category 4.