Beryl enters GOM, heading towards Texas: Update

Updates hurricane watch and status of Texas ports and lightering zones.

Hurricane Beryl weakened to a tropical storm as it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Mexico on Friday afternoon, with a likely second landfall in Texas on Monday.

Maximum sustained winds have dropped to near 65mph, the National Hurricane Center said in a 5pm ET advisory, but the tropical storm is forecast to strengthen to a hurricane again as it moves over the Gulf of Mexico, with forecasts pointing to a landfall late Sunday or early Monday from far northeastern Mexico to the eastern Texas coast.

The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch from the mouth of the Rio Grande River to Sargent, Texas, about 80 miles southwest of Houston. Heavy rainfall of 4-8 inches is expected by Sunday into next week.

The US Coast Guard changed the status of the port of Corpus Christi, Texas — a key US oil export hub — to "X-ray" at 3pm ET Friday, meaning gale force winds are expected to arrive at the port within 48 hours. All commercial traffic and transfer operations can continue during X-ray, but the Coast Guard said ocean-going commercial vessels greater than 500 gross tons should make plans to depart the port.

Corpus Christi is also home to three refineries totaling 800,000 b/d of capacity. Citgo said it is implementing its hurricane preparedness plan at its 165,000 b/d refinery there.

The ports of Houston, Texas City, Galveston and Freeport were set to port condition Whiskey at 5:05pm ET Friday, meaning gale force winds are expected to arrive within 72 hours. The ports remain open to all commercial traffic.

Ship-to-ship transfers off the Texas coast proceeded as normal on Friday but will be postponed off Corpus Christi beginning Sunday. The US National Weather Service (NWS) forecast winds up to 90mph and waves up to 32 ft at the Corpus Christi lightering area on Sunday and Monday before calmer conditions return Tuesday.

Ship-to-ship transfers are expected to be postponed at the Galveston Offshore Lightering Area early next week due to the same conditions.

Most of Mexico's Gulf coast ports were closed today and many offshore oil production operations.

The impact to US Gulf oil and gas operations so far appears to be limited, with BP determining forecasts "indicate Hurricane Beryl no longer poses a significant threat" to its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell had taken the precaution of shutting in production and evacuating all staff from its Perdido platform and its Whale development, which is scheduled to begin operations later this year.

"We have safely paused some of our drilling operations, but there are currently no other impacts on our production across the Gulf of Mexico," the company said late on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Beryl was a Category 5 storm, which made it the strongest on record for the month of July, as it left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean.

By Stephen Cunningham, Tray Swanson and Nathan Risser