At least two energy companies are taking steps to prepare for severe weather that’s expected to hit Florida and Texas later this week and through the weekend.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects that when Tropical Depression Two lands, it will bring thunderstorms, gusty winds, and up to 4 inches of rain from western Florida all the way to the Gulf of Mexico coastline between the Houston–Galveston area of Texas and Corpus Christi, Texas.
CenterPoint Energy activated its Emergency Operations Center to prepare for grid impacts across Greater Houston and the southeast Texas coast.
"With the storm forecast to reach Greater Houston by Friday, if any weather-related outages occur, our crews will be ready to respond and restore power safely and as quickly as possible," CenterPoint Resilience VP Nathan Brownell said in a statement.
Oil production in the region is dominated by Shell, BP, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum.
Chevron has begun evacuating staff offshore and shutting in production at its Petronius platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and said it is transporting nonessential personnel from its Tubular Bells and Blind Faith platforms.
"Production from our other Chevron-operated Gulf of America assets remains at normal levels," Chevron told Reuters.
The NHC upgraded Tropical Depression Two to a tropical cyclone called Tropical Storm Bertha after its winds exceeded 39 mph.
The consulting firm Earth Science Associates estimates that Tropical Storm Bertha could result in the loss of some 2 million barrels of oil, which is a 10,000-barrel increase from June’s Tropical Storm Arthur, a short-lived cyclone that formed off the Texas coast last month and caused flooding, tornadoes, and heavy rainfall.
The path of Tropical Storm Bertha is expected to span higher production oil platforms than Tropical Storm Arthur did.