By Arathy Somasekhar, Georgina McCartney and Laila Kearney
HOUSTON (Reuters) -Oil and gas companies in Texas resumed some operations on Tuesday after Hurricane Beryl lashed the state with winds of 79 miles per hour, while some facilities suffered damage and power had not yet been fully restored.
Beryl’s impact on oil and gas production is expected to be limited. The storm made landfall on Monday near the coastal town of Matagorda. Energy companies shut down operations before its arrival, and Texas’ major ports and navigation channels closed.
Some ports reopened on Tuesday and most producers and facilities increased production. Some were limited by the slow restoration of power to homes, businesses and industrial customers.
Weather forecasting firm AccuWeather has made a preliminary estimate of $28 billion to $32 billion in total damage and economic loss from the hurricane in the United States.
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 1.8 million customers were without power in Texas as of late Tuesday, including about 1.4 million customers served by provider CenterPoint Energy (NYSE:).
The figure in Texas was more than double the number of customers who lost power during a weather event in Houston in May. In some city districts it took more than a week for the outages to be resolved.
CenterPoint said in a statement that it has restored power to more than 850,000 of the total 2.26 million affected customers, and is “confident of restoring 1 million customers within 48 hours of the storm leaving the area.”
‘I can’t give you a timeline, but it won’t be tomorrow’ Center ‘s Local Government Relationship Manager Paul Lock responded to a question about when power would be fully restored.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick urged CenterPoint to work as quickly as possible to restore power.
“We can do a post-analysis of their success or failures after we get the power back,” Patrick added in response to questions about whether the utility was prepared ahead of the hurricane.
Houston was sunny Tuesday with temperatures in the high 90s Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius), causing problems as power outages knocked out air conditioning. Many gas stations in Houston were closed due to lack of power or fuel supplies.
Beryl quickly lost strength as it made landfall and was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday, the US National Hurricane Center said. It warned that flash flooding and tornadoes remained possible from mid-Mississippi to the Lower Ohio Valley.
REDUCE TEXAS FLOODING
Texas is the largest oil and gas producing state in the US, accounting for about 40% of oil and 20% of gas production, and is also a major hub for shipping and refining. Any weather-related disruption could impact crude oil and fuel production levels, as well as imports and exports.
“While the hurricane has not caused any major disruptions to U.S. oil production and refining so far, several oil ports remain closed, while massive power outages could depress oil demand,” Goldman Sachs said in a note.
Most refineries in Houston and Texas City are designed to continue operations even during heavy rains, but some of these facilities, ports and other energy infrastructure could face problems from persistent power outages, experts say.
Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:) on Monday prepared to restart multiple units at its 631,000 barrels per day (bpd) Galveston Bay oil refinery in Texas City, sources said. The factory was waiting for power to restart operations, the company said in a government filing.
Phillips 66’s (NYSE:) 265,000 barrel-per-day Sweeny refinery in Texas has returned its plants to normal operations after a disruption on Monday caused by Beryl. Citgo Petroleum temporarily cut production at its 165,000 barrel-per-day Corpus Christi plant this weekend.
Ports from Point Comfort through Houston, including Freeport, Galveston and Texas City, saw damage and significant operational delays, a shipping company wrote in a letter to customers.
The Port of Corpus Christi reopened shipping on Monday. The Port of Freeport said it had reopened Monday, adding that some facilities were running on backup power while utilities worked to restore electricity.
The Houston Ship Channel has opened to inbound traffic with restrictions, according to a message from the shipping agent. Port Houston said its terminals would resume operations on Wednesday.
Shipping and cargo operations at the Port of Galveston, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Houston, remained suspended Tuesday as power outages continued in parts of the city, said Rodger Rees, CEO of the Galveston Wharves maritime commercial center.
At least one cruise ship was cleared to dock in Galveston on Tuesday.
Shell (LON:), Chevron (NYSE:) and BP (NYSE:) began redeploying personnel evacuated from their platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. ExxonMobil (NYSE:) was assessing its Hoover offshore platform while working to restart operations, the company said.
Freeport LNG, the third-largest liquefaction plant in the US, has not provided an operational update since it cut production on Sunday.
The Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE:) unit was down due to weather conditions at its natural gas liquids (NGL) processing facility in Mont Belvieu in east Texas, according to a filing.
Energy transfer (NYSE:)’s Mont Belvieu NGL facility was fully operational on Tuesday, the company said, after problems reported in a regulatory filing. Mont Belvieu is the price point for the North American NGL markets.
