By Laura Sanicola
Sept 14 (Reuters) - Texas refineries continued to run
normally as rains, flooding and power outages began affecting
Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday.
Tropical Storm Nicholas moved slowly toward the Houston
metropolitan area after weakening from a hurricane.
Nicholas was about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Houston,
Texas by 7 a.m. Central Time (1200 GMT), heading northeast with
maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph), the National
Hurricane Center said in a bulletin, after it hit the Texas
coast hours earlier.
Although Hurricane Ida knocked off significant amount of
refining capacity in the Gulf Coast earlier this month, Texas
refineries remained operating as of early Tuesday.
Motiva Enterprises' 607,000 barrel-per-day (bpd)
Port Arthur, Texas refinery - the largest in the United States -
was operating normally as Nicholas was passing over the area on
Tuesday morning, said sources familiar with plant operations.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc's 302,800 bpd joint-venture
Deer Park, Texas refinery was also operating normally on Tuesday
morning after the passage of Nicholas, said sources familiar
with plant operations.
Nicholas caused widespread power outages as it crossed over
the Houston metropolitan area late Monday night and early
Tuesday morning.
About 485,000 customers were without power in Texas on
Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Texas energy company CenterPoint Energy Inc said on
Tuesday that about 400,000 homes and businesses in its
Houston-area service territory were without power.
More than 40% of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas
output remained offline on Monday, two weeks after Hurricane Ida
slammed into the Louisiana coast, according to offshore
regulator Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
Damages to an offshore hub that pumps oil and gas from three
major oilfields for processing onshore and power outages at
onshore processing plants are responsible for the production
losses.
All four liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants operating
along the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, remained in service early
Tuesday, according to pipeline feedgas data from Refinitiv.
(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
