Houston power outages creeping down toward 1mn

Slightly more than 1mn Houston-area homes and businesses were without electricity Thursday afternoon as local power distribution company CenterPoint Energy continues to slowly restore service after Hurricane Beryl.

The storm knocked out power to about 2.1mn customers on 8 July when it made landfall southwest of the city as a Category 1 hurricane. The pace of restoration of service to areas that include major oil refineries, petrochemical plants and an LNG export terminal has been seen by many in the region as far too slow.

At 6:50mp ET on Thursday about 1.04mn customers were still without power, according to CenterPoint. The company estimates that about 1.2mn customers have had power restored so far, another 400,000 should be restored by the end of day Friday and another 350,000 by the end of day Sunday.

The 2 Bcf/d (57mn m³/d) Freeport LNG terminal in Texas remained offline and without power on Thursday after it was shut down ahead of Beryl's landfall.

The electric power sector accounts for about 45pc of Texas' gas use, and gas generates about 43pc of the state's electricity, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Spot gas prices at the Katy storage hub, a key natural gas market near Houston, averaged $1.715/mmBtu on Thursday, down by 7.2pc from the previous session but 5.2pc higher from the start of this week. The index began July at $1.97/mmBtu.

By David Haydon