MEXICO CITY, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The Mexican oil ports of Dos Bocas and Pajaritos on the southern Gulf of Mexico coast reopened on Thursday and crude oil shipments resumed after the passage of Hurricane Dean, port officials said. The Dos Bocas port was operating normally, port supervisor Arturo de la Cruz told Reuters, while another port official said the first of several crude oil tankers had already left Pajaritos, part of the Coatzacoalcos port complex. Mexico's third main Gulf of Mexico oil port, Cayo Arcas, remained closed, however, due to strong winds, the transport ministry said. "There is no movement there," a port official told Reuters. In normal conditions, state oil monopoly Pemex exports some 1.7 million barrels per day of crude oil. Around 80 percent of that goes to the United States, mostly leaving from Dos Bocas, Pajaritos and Cayo Arcas, and the rest from the Pacific coast. A Pemex spokeswoman said it was too early to say how quickly normal oil exports could resume. The company said this week it had an inventory of 10.5 million barrels of oil that it would load onto ships once ports reopen. Pemex said on Wednesday it would resume production on Friday, after Dean's passage through the Gulf of Mexico forced it to evacuate hundreds of platforms and shut off production. Pemex said it expected to resume 80 percent of normal oil and gas production by early next week and 100 percent production later in the week, barring major damage. Mexico, one of the top three suppliers of crude to the United States, shut down 2.65 million bpd of production as Dean -- a monster Category 5 storm as it made landfall on Mexico's Caribbean coast in the early hours of Tuesday -- raged through the Gulf.
