UpdateIke strengthens, heads for US Gulf coast

10 September 2008 12:10  [Source: ICIS news]

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LONDON (ICIS news)--Hurricane Ike is picking up strength as it is heading towards oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly petrochemicals plants on the Texas coast, after killing at least 80 people in the Caribbean.

The National Hurricane Center said maximum sustained winds were near 85 miles/hour (136 km/hour) with higher gusts and it was categorised as a category one hurricane.

“Some strengthening is forecast and Ike could become a major hurricane in the central Gulf of Mexico,” said the centre in its latest update.

At 05:00 EDT (09:00 GMT), the centre of Ike was located around 200 km north of the western tip of Cuba and was moving toward the west-northwest at 8 miles/hour.

It was expected to continue on its path across the central Gulf of Mexico for the next 24-48 hours and could make landfall in Texas on Saturday afternoon.

Texas put 7,500 National Guard members on standby and urged coastal residents to stock up on supplies. It was still too early to predict the path of Ike, but forecasters said it might make landfall at Corpus Christie, home to a number of chemical plants.

Most companies with facilities in the Gulf of Mexico had already begun evacuating their personnel from offshore rigs only shortly after Hurricane Gustav had rampaged through the area but caused little structural damage on initial inspections on refineries and plants.

Crude prices failed to react to Ike after OPEC’s surprise announcement to slash output by 520,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared with July levels.

October Brent on London’s ICE Futures dropped below $100/bbl in overnight trade, bounced back to $102.00/bbl, and at 12:00 GMT eased back to around $100.50/bbl.

At the same time, October NYMEX light sweet crude futures were trading at $104.33/bbl, up $1.07/bbl on Tuesday’s close.

Bohan Loh contributed to this article

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