Oil companies in Texas restoring operations following hurricane Beryl
09/07/2024 11:00
By Marianna Parraga, Arathy Somasekhar and Erwin Seba
HOUSTON, July 9 (Reuters) - Oil and gas companies in
Texas were restarting operations on Tuesday after Hurricane
Beryl lashed the state with 80-mph winds, damaging property and
leaving millions of people without power.
Beryl made landfall early on Monday near the coastal town of
Matagorda. Some energy firms shut operations ahead of its
arrival and Texas' largest ports and navigation channels closed.
But its impact on oil and gas production is expected to be
minor.
On Tuesday, ports were set to reopen, and some producers and
facilities were ramping up output after preventively cutting
down processing. Some were limited by slow restoration of power
to homes, businesses and industrial customers.
About 2.8 million customers remained without power in Texas
late on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us, including some 2
million served by the state's largest provider, CenterPoint
Energy CNP.N .
The figure was more than double the number of customers that
lost power in May when a weather event bringing strong winds hit
Houston. It took more than a week for those outages to be
resolved in some city neighborhoods.
CenterPoint, which said the hurricane resulted in
"widespread power outages," warned customers that the power
interruptions might last for several days due to the severity of
the storm.
WATER UP AND DOWN
Texas is the largest U.S. oil and gas producing state,
accounting for some 40% of oil and 20% of gas output, and is
also a major shipping and refining hub. Any weather-related
interruption could have an impact on crude and fuel production
levels, as well as imports and exports.
However, flooding in city regions was expected to ease as
water began receding quickly after Beryl's severe rainfall,
which surpassed 11 inches in some areas south of Houston.
Most refineries in Houston and Texas City are designed to
maintain operations even amid heavy rainfall, but some of those
facilities, ports and other energy infrastructure can develop
problems from sustained power interruptions, according to
experts.
Phillips 66 PSX.N said on Monday its Lake Charles,
Louisiana and Sweeny, Texas refineries had power and were
operating, while Citgo Petroleum temporarily reduced production
over the weekend at its 165,000-bpd Corpus Christi plant.
Formosa Plastics said on Monday it had temporarily shut down
operations at its Point Comfort plant site.
The Port of Corpus Christi reopened ship navigation on
Monday afternoon, but the Port of Houston said its terminals
would remain closed on Tuesday after conducting a preliminary
assessment of facilities and systems.
Freeport LNG, the third largest liquefied natural gas
facility in the U.S., has not provided an operational update
since it said it ramped-down production on Sunday.
Beryl is expected to gradually lose strength and become a
tropical depression, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on
Monday. The storm was moving north-northeastward before
accelerating across the lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio
Valley in the next days.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga, Arathy Somasekhar and Erwin
Seba in Houston; Editing by Liz Hampton and David Gregorio)
((marianna.parraga@thomsonreuters.com; +1 713 371 7559; Reuters
Messaging: @mariannaparraga))