Tropical Storm Ida weakened and was losing speed yesterday as it drenched the US Gulf Coast and oil installations, shutting down almost 30 percent of Gulf energy production.
Once a Category 2 hurricane, Ida became less threatening as its top sustained winds fell to near 95kph, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
The storm had also slowed down, with its center expected to cross the US Gulf Coast near Mobile, Alabama, later on yesterday, the hurricane center said.
Forecasters said Ida would continue weakening as it moved over cooler waters before landfall and then lose strength more quickly as it moved inland, turning east over northern Florida.
A US Coast Guard helicopter plucked two workers from a storm-damaged oil rig south of New Orleans. Ida is blamed for 124 flood and mudslide deaths in El Salvador.
The Coast Guard closed the Port of Mobile, halting traffic on Mobile Bay, and authorities closed schools and government offices in coastal counties in Alabama and Florida, telling residents of flood-prone areas and mobile homes to evacuate.
An overnight curfew was issued for part of the Alabama coast.
Ida, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm earlier on Monday, posed the first real storm threat of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season to Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production, and forced some companies to shut down off-shore platforms and evacuate personnel.
The US Minerals Management Service said Ida had shut down 29.6 percent of Gulf oil production and 27.5 percent of gas output.
Energy markets have been hypersensitive to Gulf cyclones since the devastating 2004 and 2005 seasons, when storms like Katrina disrupted US output and sent pump prices soaring.
With Ida weakening, most offshore oil rigs in the Gulf would not see any damage, said Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at private forecaster Planalytics Inc.
“I think that by tomorrow it will be normal operations across the production region,” Rouiller said on Monday.
Oil prices eased to below US$79 a barrel as Ida, which cut US oil and gas supplies, was downgraded from a powerful hurricane.
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only US terminal capable of handling the largest tankers, stopped unloading ships due to stormy seas. The Independence Hub, a major offshore natural gas processing facility, also was closed.
A quarter of US oil and 15 percent of its natural gas are produced from fields in the Gulf, and the coast is home to 40 percent of the nation’s refining capacity.
At 1am EST, the center of Ida was about 150 km south-southwest of Mobile and was moving north at about 16kph, the hurricane center said.
A tropical storm warning was in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, eastward to Aucilla River, Florida. Some 2.8 million residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida could feel the storm’s effects, the US Census Bureau said.
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