(Updates status of Colonial pipeline, Freeport LNG outage)
By Laura Sanicola and Marianna Parraga
HOUSTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - The largest U.S. fuel line
partially resumed operating after Nicholas made landfall as a
hurricane before weakening on Tuesday, the second U.S. Gulf
storm in as many weeks.
Rains, flooding and power outages were affecting Texas and
Louisiana, which were still trying to recover from Hurricane
Ida, which knocked most U.S. Gulf offshore oil and gas
production offline. Power outages in the Houston area caused
Colonial to pre-emptively shut down its main gasoline and
distillate fuel lines, the company said in a notice to shippers.
Colonial Pipeline on Tuesday said it had resumed operations
on its main gasoline Line 1, while distillate Line 2 remained
down due to a power outage in the Houston area after Hurricane
Nicholas made landfall.
Royal Dutch Shell halted production its Perdido
offshore oil platform due to heavy winds, and U.S. liquefied
natural gas producer Freeport LNG said processing at its Texas
coast facility was halted, likely due to a power outage.
The storm caused widespread power outages as it crossed over
the Houston metropolitan area late Monday night and early
Tuesday morning, but that number shrank throughout Tuesday.
Colonial supplies roughly 2.5 million barrels a day of
refined products to some of the busiest U.S. fuel markets,
mostly in the Southeast and East Coast. The line also shut
during Hurricane Ida, but was restarted without incident a few
days after the storm landed.
More than 40% of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas
output remained offline on Monday, two weeks after Ida slammed
into the Louisiana coast, according to offshore regulator Bureau
of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
Shell said it was ready to restart production at its
offshore Perdido platform once power is restored to a receiving
facility. The company had no plans to return staff to the
offshore facility on Tuesday.
Some 14 inches of rain fell in Galveston while Houston got
almost six inches overnight and into the morning, the National
Weather Service reported. Nicholas, which landed in Texas, had a
much less pronounced effect than Ida on Gulf Coast refining
capacity.
Most Texas refiners were operating on 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, as was Exxon's Baytown and Beaumont refineries.
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.
Vessel traffic was idled on Tuesday morning at the Houston
Ship Channel and the Calcasieu Ship Channel. The ports of
Houston, Freeport, Galveston and Texas City were open with
restrictions, however, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Some shippers expect the restrictions set by Texas and
Louisiana ports while Nicholas passes through will add to
ongoing import and export delays from Ida.
(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; additional reporting by Erwin
Seba, Liz Hampton and Arpan Varghese; Editing by David Gregorio
and Nick Zieminski)
