Oil and gas giants Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX), Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) and Shell Plc (NYSE:SHEL) have evacuated staff and paused operations on oil platforms in the U.S. Gulf Of Mexico ahead of an expected hurricane, Reuters reports.
According to the National Hurricane Center, a system developing in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow from a tropical storm and reach hurricane strength on Monday before reaching the northwestern U.S. Gulf Coast by the middle of the week. NHC says the Potential Tropical Cyclone Six was located at 305 miles south-southeast of the Texas-Mexico border, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
"While it is too soon to pinpoint the exact location and magnitude of impacts, the potential for life-threatening storm surge and damaging winds are increasing for portions of the Louisiana and Upper Texas coastlines beginning Tuesday night," NHC said.
NHC says the system is expected to bring heavy rainfall and considerable flash flooding along portions of southernmost Texas, the coast of far northeast Mexico, southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi into Thursday morning.
Back in July, natural gas flows to Freeport LNG's export plant in Texas fell close to zero and more than 1.8 million homes and businesses in Texas were left without power after Category 5 hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, leaving in its wake a trail of dangerous storm surges, floods and heavy winds. CenterPoint Energy (NYSE:CNP), a public utility that serves nearly 2.6 million customers, reported that more than 1.5 million were without power in its service area.
With a capacity to handle 2.1-Bcf/d, Freeport is the nation's third-biggest LNG export plant behind Cheniere Energy's (NYSE:LNG) 4.5-Bcf/d Sabine Pass in Louisiana and 2.4-Bcf/d Corpus Christi in Texas. Freeport has three liquefaction trains capable of turning about 0.7 Bcf/d of gas into LNG. LSEG data showed that feedgas to the facility averaged around 1.7 Bcf/d from June 30 to July 6.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. More