As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...
Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Houston Ship Channel, part of
the largest U.S. petroleum port, closed to traffic as Tropical
Storm Humberto approached, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Houston and Galveston-Texas City ship pilots stopped boarding
vessels at sea around 12:30 p.m. local time, Chief Warrant Officer
Adam Wine said in a telephone interview. Seven deep-draft ships
were waiting to enter the 54-mile (87-kilometer) channel and 11
were waiting to leave when boarding stopped, he said.
``We're preparing for the storm to come in, and the Houston pilots
have stopped moving ships,'' Wine said. Galveston-Texas City pilots
are moving ships from inner anchorage points to the docks, ``but
they're not bringing in any ships from out at sea.''
The port is expecting winds of 50 miles per hour, 12-foot seas and
about a foot of rain, he said.
Humberto, the eighth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season,
was about 70 miles south-southwest of Galveston, Texas, the U.S.
National Hurricane Center said in a statement released at 2 p.m.
New York time. It's moving north at 6 miles per hour with maximum
sustained winds of 45 mph.
Houston has the biggest U.S. oil port and second-largest port of any
kind by tonnage. More than 420 petrochemical plants and two of the
nation's four biggest oil refineries are in the Houston area, according
to the Greater Houston Partnership.
Refiners Unaffected
U.S. Gulf Coast refiners, including Valero Energy Corp., Motiva
Enterprises LLC and Exxon Mobil Corp., are monitoring the storm
and preparing for potential flooding as Humberto heads toward the
Texas-Louisiana coast. Flooding and high winds from Hurricanes Rita
and Katrina in 2005 cut about 30 percent of U.S. oil-refining capacity,
causing fuel prices to surge.
Gasoline futures for October delivery today rose 3.49 cents, or 1.8
percent, to $2.016 a gallon at 2:50 p.m. on the New York Mercantile
Exchange. Crude oil for October delivery gained $1.68, or 2.2 percent,
to settle at $79.91 a barrel at 2:54 p.m., a record close, after reaching
an all-time high of $80.18.
Operations are normal at Valero's Texas refineries in Houston, Texas
City and Port Arthur, spokesman Bill Day said in a telephone interview.
Total Petrochemicals USA Inc., which has a refinery in Port Arthur, is
ensuring that dyke systems are operating properly to deal with
excessive amounts of water.
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