Author: Arathy Somasekhar, Georgina McCartney and Laila Kearney
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Oil and gas companies in Texas restarted some operations on Tuesday after Hurricane Beryl slammed into the state with 80 mph (129 kph) winds, but some The facility was damaged and power has not yet been fully restored.
Beryl is expected to have a limited impact on oil and gas production. The storm made landfall on Monday near the coastal town of Matagorda. Energy companies shut down operations ahead of arrival, and Texas’ largest ports and waterways were closed.
Some ports reopened on Tuesday and most producers and facilities are ramping up output. Some are limited by the slow restoration of power to homes, businesses and industrial customers.
Weather forecasting company AccuWeather initially estimated the total damage and economic losses caused by hurricanes in the United States at $28 billion to $32 billion.
More than 1.8 million customers in Texas remained without power Tuesday night, including about 1.4 million customers served by provider CenterPoint Energy (NYSE: ), according to PowerOutage.us.
The Texas number is more than double the number of customers in Houston who lost power due to weather events in May. Power outages in some urban communities took more than a week to resolve.
CenterPoint said in a statement that it had restored power to more than 850,000 of the 2.26 million customers affected and “remains confident that power will be restored to 1 million customers within 48 hours of the storm leaving the region.” .
“I can’t give you a timetable, but it won’t be tomorrow,” center point Local Government Relations Manager Paul Lock responded to inquiries about when power will be fully restored.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick urged CenterPoint to restore power as soon as possible.
In response to a question about whether power companies were prepared before a hurricane, Patrick added: “We can do a postmortem on their success or failure after power is restored.”
On Tuesday, Houston experienced sunny skies and temperatures as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius), causing power outages and air conditioning failures. Many gas stations in Houston are closed due to lack of power or fuel inventory.
The National Hurricane Center said Beryl quickly lost strength after making landfall and was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone by Tuesday. It warned that flash flooding and tornadoes were still possible from central Mississippi to the lower Ohio Valley.
Texas Flood Mitigation
Texas is the largest oil and natural gas producing state in the United States, accounting for approximately 40% of oil production and 20% of natural gas production. It is also a major shipping and refining center. Any weather-related disruptions could impact crude oil and fuel production levels as well as imports and exports.
“While the hurricane has so far not caused significant disruption to U.S. oil production and refining, multiple oil ports remain closed, and large-scale power outages could impact oil demand,” Goldman Sachs said in a note.
Experts say most refineries in Houston and Texas City are designed to remain operational even during heavy rainfall, but some of the facilities, ports and other energy infrastructure could run into problems due to ongoing power outages.
Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:) is preparing to restart multiple units at its 631,000 barrels per day Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City on Monday, sources said. The company said in a state regulatory filing that the plant was waiting for power to be restored.
Phillips 66’s (NYSE:) 265,000 barrel-per-day Sweeny refinery in Texas has returned to normal operations after disruption caused by Beryl on Monday. Citgo Petroleum temporarily reduced output at its 165,000 barrels per day Corpus Christi plant over the weekend.
A shipping agency wrote in a note to clients that ports from Port Comfort to Houston, including Freeport, Galveston and Texas City, suffered damage and experienced significant operational delays.
The Port of Corpus Christi reopened to shipping on Monday. The Port of Freeport said it had reopened on Monday, adding that some facilities were operating on backup power while utility crews worked to restore power.
A notice from shipping agents said the Houston Ship Channel is open to inbound traffic with restrictions. The Port of Houston said its terminals will resume operations Wednesday.
Shipping and cargo operations at the Port of Galveston, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Houston, are struggling due to ongoing power outages in parts of the city, said Rodger Rees, CEO of Galveston Terminals, a maritime business hub. The suspension remained on Tuesday.
At least one cruise ship was allowed to dock in Galveston on Tuesday.
Shell (LON: ), Chevron (NYSE: ) and BP (NYSE: ) began redeploying personnel evacuated from platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Exxon Mobil The company said it was evaluating its Hoover offshore platform while working to restart operations.
Freeport LNG, the third-largest U.S. liquefaction facility, has not provided an operational update since it said it would cut production on Sunday.
A unit of Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: ) tripped due to weather at its natural gas liquids (NGL) processing facility in Mont Belvieu, East Texas, according to a filing.
energy transfer The company said its Mont Belvieu NGL facility was fully operational on Tuesday after issues were reported in regulatory filings. Mont Belvieu is the pricing point for the North American LNG market.
