Tag Archives: Texas

Texas energy sector struggles to thaw after deep freeze

By Arpan Varghese

(Reuters) – A deep freeze kept the Texas energy sector in the dark for a fifth day on Wednesday, with Houston’s major shipping channel closed overnight and at least a fifth of U.S. refining output offline.

About 500,000 to 1.2 million bpd of crude production has also been shut, including in the Permian, the largest U.S. oilfield, and it could be weeks before it is fully restored, industry analysts said.

The cold snap, which has killed 21 people and knocked out power to millions of people in Texas is not expected to let up until this weekend.

Electricity prices in Texas continued to surge, as utilities scrambled to meet heating demand. Next-day power for Wednesday at the ERCOT North hub, which includes the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, spiked to a record of $8,800 per MWh, a nearly six-fold jump from $1,490 on Tuesday.

Texas produces more oil and natural gas than any other U.S. state, and its operators, unlike those in North Dakota or Alaska, are not used to dealing with frigid temperatures.

“A production rebound could potentially take more than a week or two for the majority of oil and gas wells, but it might take longer for production from nearly all wells to recover,” analysts at Citigroup wrote.

The Houston Ship Channel, which had opened for some vessel traffic during Tuesday, was shut again overnight. The 53-mile (85 km) waterway crucial to oil and fuel exports, has been closed since Feb. 14.

“We have 4 delayed incoming vessels, which is not much. The shipping channel is not operating at night time due to weather hazards and we are planning to open the channel in another 3 hours from now. Last night we had one order cancellation due to the weather,” a Houston Pilots dispatcher said.

The supply disruptions drove further gains in oil prices on Wednesday, although U.S. natural gas prices eased after rising more than 10% on Tuesday.

The state’s power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which had instituted rolling blackouts as demand overwhelmed generation, on Wednesday said it had directed utilities to restore power to 600,000 households last night, with 2.7 million still experiencing an outage.

Nearly 4 million barrels per day of refining capacity has been knocked out, Reuters calculations found.

Cold weather primarily impacts instrumentation that monitors and operates refinery units.

The cold has shut natural gas production and pipelines, which refineries use in power generation. Widespread power outages or instability of external power supply can force shutdowns.

Apart from the refinery shutdowns in Texas, including the nation’s largest, Motiva’s 600,000 bpd Port Arthur facility, Citgo Petroleum Corp said it was continuing to run its 418,000 barrel-per-day Lake Charles plant in Louisiana at reduced rates.

Citgo said it was also finalizing “start-up plans” subject to re-establishing third party services, at its 167,500 barrel-per-day bpd Corpus Christi, Texas refinery.

(Reporting by Arpan Varghese and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

Texas oil refineries shut as winter storm hits U.S. energy sector

By Arpan Varghese

(Reuters) – Freezing temperatures across Texas during the extended holiday weekend forced energy companies to shut oil refineries in the largest U.S. crude-producing state and restricted natural gas pipeline operations.

The rare deep freeze prompted the state’s electric grid operator to impose rotating blackouts, leaving nearly 3 million customers without power.

President Joe Biden declared an emergency on Monday, unlocking federal assistance to Texas.

Texas produces roughly 4.6 million barrels of oil a day and is home to some of the nation’s largest refineries, spread throughout the Gulf Coast. In Midland, heart of the U.S. Permian shale region, temperatures were in the single digits Fahrenheit.

Motiva Enterprises said it was shutting down its Port Arthur, Texas, complex, which includes its 607,000 barrel-per-day refinery – the largest in the United States.

Exxon also began shutting its 369,024 bpd Beaumont refinery and its 560,500 bpd Baytown refinery and adjoining chemical plant in Texas, sources familiar with plant operations said.

Its Baton Rouge facility in Louisiana experienced operational issues.

Citgo Petroleum Corp said some units at its 167,500 bpd Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery were being shut.

Sources familiar with plant operations said earlier that the crude distillation unit, a reformer and a hydrotreater were shut by cold weather at the refinery, with all other units also being powered down.

The cold snap also forced Lyondell Basell’s 263,776 bpd Houston refinery to operate at minimum production and shut most units at Marathon’s 585,000 bpd Galveston Bay plant.

“We are also getting reports of power outages across the Permian, which are expected to continue over the weekend if the current weather system persists. This may result in intermittent production shut-ins, with a moderate impact on Permian oil production expected in February,” Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets, Bjornar Tonhaugen, said in a note.

Energy distribution was stalled across large parts of the United States.

Kinder Morgan’s Natural Gas Pipeline Co. reported capacity constraints at various locations on its pipeline system, while Enable Gas Transmission said it was taking measures to ensure adequate supply for customers.

Oil pipeline operator Enbridge Inc. said on Monday a 585,000 bpd crude oil pipeline that runs from its terminal near Pontiac, Illinois, outside of Chicago, to the largest U.S. oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, was halted because of power outages.

“Crews are working with electric utility providers to restore power to Line 59,” as the pipeline is called, said Enbridge spokesman Michael Barnes. “The power failure is due to the winter storm the U.S. is experiencing.”

Colonial Pipeline Co, the largest oil products pipeline in the United States, said there were no significant impacts to operations at the moment due to the weather.

The icy weather conditions also prompted Port Houston public terminals to cease vessel operations from Sunday evening through Monday.

(Reporting by Arpan Varghese and Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Gary McWilliams and Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Andrea Ricci, Dan Grebler and Sonya Hepinstall)

Rare deep freeze leaves more than 2 million Texas customers without power

(Reuters) – A rare deep freeze in Texas that raised demand for power forced the U.S. state’s electric grid operator on Monday to impose rotating blackouts that left more than 2 million customers without power.

The PowerOutage.us website – an ongoing project created to track power outages – said 2,629,684 customers were experiencing outages at 9:44 a.m. ET (1444 GMT).

President Joe Biden declared an emergency on Monday, unlocking federal assistance to Texas, where temperatures on Monday ranged from minus 8 to 21 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 to minus 6 Celsius).

Apart from Texas, much of the United States from the Pacific Northwest through the Great Plains and into the mid-Atlantic states was in the grip of bone-chilling weather over the three-day Presidents Day holiday weekend.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) sought to cut power use in response to a winter record of 69,150 MW on Sunday evening, more than 3,200 MW higher than the previous winter peak in January 2018.

About 10,500 MW of customer load was shed at the highest point, enough power to serve approximately two million homes, it said, adding that extreme weather caused many generating units across fuel types to trip offline and become unavailable.

As of early Monday, it said over 30,000 MW of generation had been forced off the system, and rotating outages would likely last throughout the morning and could be initiated until the weather emergency ended.

“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a statement.

The storms knocked out nearly half the state’s wind power generation capacity on Sunday. Wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of electricity in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies, ERCOT estimates.

Of the 25,000-plus megawatts of wind power capacity normally available in Texas, 12,000 megawatts were out of service on Sunday morning, an ERCOT spokeswoman said.

A level three emergency notice was issued by the regulator, urging customers to limit power usage and prevent an uncontrolled systemwide outage.

The National Weather Service said an Arctic air mass had spread southwards, well beyond areas accustomed to freezing weather, with winter storm warnings posted for most of the Gulf Coast region, Oklahoma and Missouri.

The spot price of electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday. [NGA/]

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum, David Goodman and Howard Goller)

From icy Texas to snowy Seattle, frigid weather blankets huge swath of U.S.

(Reuters) – Winter weather battered the United States from coast to coast on Thursday as a series of storms expected to last for days mixed with an arctic air mass to bring snow and freezing rain as far south as Texas where there was a deadly multi-vehicle pileup.

A line of freezing rain stretched from Texas to West Virginia, with some of it accumulating one-quarter to one-half inch, according to meteorologist Marc Chenard at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Among the areas to get a coating of freezing rain during the Thursday morning rush hour was Fort Worth, Texas, where local media reported that at least five people were killed in a massive pileup of some 70 vehicles on an interstate highway.

Video at the scene showed dozens of smashed cars and trucks, some literally piled on top of one another on a wet roadway and under cloudy skies.

The Texas precipitation was part of a system that was bringing rain to several southeastern states and modest amounts of snow to West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, but was winding down, Chenard said.

A separate system will make its presence felt in the mid-Atlantic area on Saturday, he said.

“That may bring potentially significant freezing rain accumulations to portions of Virginia and Maryland,” he added.

Meanwhile, another weather system was making its way into the Pacific Northwest where it was forecast to remain through Saturday and bring as much eight inches (20 cm) of snow to normally rainy Seattle and 12 inches (30 cm) to Portland, Oregon. Seattle averages about 6 inches of snow in an entire winter season.

“An event of this magnitude is rare,” said Chenard.

That weather system is forecast to make its way eastward, bringing significant snowfall to the upper Midwest over the weekend and freezing rain south almost to Gulf Coast of Texas.

“There likely will be winter weather impacts in the East by early next week,” Chenard added.

The storm systems, which normally would have brought rain, have been converted into snow and ice makers by a polar air mass that has descended upon much of the country, bringing frigid temperatures before beginning to recede in the middle of next week, Chenard said.

Recent low temperatures in the upper United States from Montana to Wisconsin have ranged from minus 35 to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 37 to minus 40 degrees Celsius).

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

White House says ‘vast majority’ of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border will be turned away

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will turn away most migrants caught at its border with Mexico under a Trump-era policy aimed at limiting the spread of coronavirus and to give the Biden administration time to implement “humane” asylum processing systems, a White House official said on Wednesday.

The White House comments follow reports of the release of some migrant families into the United States and increasing pressure on President Joe Biden to reverse the restrictive policies of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

“Now is not the time to come,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a news briefing. “The vast majority of people will be turned away.”

U.S. officials in Texas last week released hundreds of Central American migrant families from custody amid concerns of overcrowding in Border Patrol facilities after local authorities in Mexico baulked at taking them back.

Biden has left in place a Trump-era COVID order called Title 42 that allows U.S. authorities to rapidly expel to Mexico migrants caught crossing the border illegally.

Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which filed a new lawsuit over the policy on Monday, said it uses a “guise” of public health to undermine legal protections for asylum seekers.

“Our fight for these families continues, until and unless the Biden administration ends this cruel practice once and for all,” Rose said in a statement.

The nascent Biden administration also faces pressure from congressional Democrats for its deportation practices.

A group of 12 Democratic lawmakers led by Representative Mondaire Jones of New York sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday criticizing recent deportations of Haitian immigrants.

The lawmakers said the removals appeared to go against Biden administration enforcement priorities outlined in a Jan. 20 memo and that it appeared immigration officials were “disparately targeting Black asylum-seekers and immigrants.”

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Mimi Dwyer in Los Angeles,; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

U.S. government partnering with Texas to build three mass vaccination sites

By Rebecca Spalding

(Reuters) – The federal government is partnering with the state of Texas to build three mass vaccination sites, following last week’s announcement that it would build such sites in California, federal health officials said in a Wednesday media briefing.

Each site will be able to get 10,000 shots in arms per day, according to Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, and should begin administering shots by Feb. 22.

The sites will be in the Dallas and Houston areas and will be operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to a state news release. One site will be AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home to the Dallas Cowboys.

Last week, the state of California said it was partnering with FEMA to open mass vaccination sites in Los Angeles and Oakland as a part of a pilot program started by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Both states said the program’s goal was to make sure people in underserved communities have access to vaccines.

U.S. judge blocks deportation freeze in swift setback for Biden

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday temporarily blocked a move by new U.S. President Joe Biden to halt the deportation of many immigrants for a 100-day period, a swift legal setback for his ambitious immigration agenda.

U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump in the Southern District of Texas, issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the policy nationwide for 14 days following a legal challenge by Texas.

The Biden administration is expected to appeal the ruling, which halts the deportation freeze while both parties submit briefs on the matter.

Biden promised on the campaign trail to enact a 100-day moratorium on deportations if elected, a proposal that contrasted sharply with the immigration crackdown promoted by Trump, a Republican.

After Biden took office on Wednesday, the top official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a memo that ordered a pause on many deportations to enable the department to better deal with “operational challenges” at the U.S.-Mexico border during the pandemic.

In a complaint filed on Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state would face irreparable harm if the deportation freeze was allowed to go into effect. Paxton, a Republican, said it would increase education and healthcare costs as more immigrants remained in Texas illegally.

Paxton also said it went against the terms of an enforcement agreement Texas brokered with the Trump administration less than two weeks before Biden took office.

Tipton said in the order on Tuesday that Texas had “a substantial likelihood of success” on at least two of its claims, including that the deportation freeze violated a federal immigration law stating that authorities “shall remove” immigrants with final deportation orders within 90 days.

The judge also found it likely that Texas would succeed on its claim that the Biden administration “arbitrarily and capriciously departed from its previous policy without sufficient explanation” when it issued the moratorium.

Paxton praised the ruling in a statement, saying a deportation moratorium would “endanger Texans and undermine federal law.”

Approximately 1.2 million immigrants in the United States have final orders of removal, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Reuters.

As of Jan. 16, ICE was holding around 6,000 detainees with final deportation orders, the spokeswoman said.

The number of detained migrants has dropped sharply during the pandemic, falling by roughly two-thirds.

Kate Huddleston, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, which filed a brief in support of the Biden administration, criticized the Texas lawsuit in a statement after the ruling.

“The administration’s pause on deportations is not only lawful but necessary to ensure that families are not separated and people are not returned to danger needlessly while the new administration reviews past actions,” she said.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles; Editing by Ross Colvin, Franklin Paul, Mark Heinrich and Marguerita Choy)

Texas attorney general files lawsuit to block Biden’s deportation freeze

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Texas attorney general filed a lawsuit on Friday that seeks to block U.S. President Joe Biden’s move to pause certain deportations for 100 days, a controversial opening-move by the Democratic president that has provoked blowback from some Republicans.

In the filing, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state would face “irreparable harm” if the deportation moratorium was allowed to go into effect.

Biden promised on the campaign trail to enact a 100-day moratorium on deportations if elected, a proposal that contrasted sharply with the immigration crackdown promoted by then-President Donald Trump, a Republican.

After Biden took office on Wednesday, the top official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a memo that ordered a pause on certain deportations to enable the department to better deal with “operational challenges” at the U.S-Mexico border during the pandemic.

In the court filing on Friday, Paxton argued that the deportation moratorium violated the president’s constitutional duty to execute federal laws. Paxton, a Republican, also said the temporary freeze violated an enforcement agreement the state brokered with the outgoing Trump administration earlier this month.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and Aurora Ellis)

Judge rejects NRA bid to dismiss or move lawsuit by New York attorney general

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York state judge on Thursday rejected the National Rifle Association’s bid to dismiss or move a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking to dissolve the gun rights group.

Justice Joel Cohen of Manhattan Supreme Court ruled six days after the NRA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect itself from lawsuits, and said it would reincorporate in the more gun-friendly Texas after 150 years in New York.

James had sued the NRA, Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre and others last August.

She accused the group of violating state laws governing nonprofits by diverting millions of dollars to fund luxurious trips for its officials, no-show contracts for associates, and other suspect expenses.

The NRA argued that if the case continued it belonged in the state capital of Albany, where it had its only New York office, and perhaps in federal court, where it has filed a countersuit accusing James of violating its members’ First Amendment rights.

“This is a case of historic constitutional importance,” the group’s lawyer Sarah Rogers argued.

The judge said accepting the NRA arguments would be “elevating form over substance,” and that it was a “big lift” to tell James she could not sue in state court.

“It would be inappropriate in these circumstances to find that the attorney general cannot pursue her claims in state court just because one of the defendants would prefer to proceed in federal court,” Cohen said.

The NRA has said it was “dumping” New York to escape its “toxic political environment.”

It accused James, a Democrat, of suing for political gain and because she dislikes what the group stands for.

Bankruptcy filings normally halt existing litigation, but the attorney general believes her lawsuit deserves an exemption because she is enforcing her “police and regulatory power.”

James Sheehan, a lawyer for James, told the judge a trial could occur early next year.

The case is New York v. National Rifle Association et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 451625-2020.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

New York nurse given COVID-19 vaccine as U.S. rollout begins

By Jonathan Allen and Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) -An intensive care unit nurse became the first person in New York state to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, marking a pivotal turn in the U.S. effort to control the deadly virus.

Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest COVID-19 patients for months, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the New York City borough of Queens, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a livestream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

Minutes after Lindsay received the injection, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”

Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York state, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the country’s first inoculations of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside trials on Monday.

The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.

As of Monday, the United States had registered more than 16 million cases and nearly 300,000 deaths from the virus.

Health officials in Texas, Utah, South Dakota, Ohio and Minnesota said they also anticipated the first doses of the vaccine would be received at select hospitals on Monday and be administered right away.

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE

The first U.S. shipments of coronavirus vaccine departed from Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry-ice to maintain the necessary sub-Arctic temperatures, and then were transported to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids, kicking off a national immunization endeavor of unprecedented complexity.

The jets delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks to be distributed to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the country. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history. There will be hiccups undoubtedly but we’ve done everything from a federal level and working with partners to make it go as smoothly as possible. Please be patient with us,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the shot as soon as he could.

The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), requiring enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers.

Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.

“We know how much people are hurting,” UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler said on Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky. “It’s not lost on us at all how important this is.”

MORE DOSES ON THE WAY

More than 100 million people, or about 30% of the U.S. population, could be immunized by the end of March, Moncef Slaoui, the chief advisor to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed coronavirus vaccine initiative, said in an interview on Sunday.

Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be first in line to get the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart. That would still leave the country far short of the herd immunity that would halt virus transmission, so health officials have warned that masks and social distancing will be needed for months to control the currently rampaging outbreak. Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told CNN in an interview on Monday that most of the 50 million vaccine doses the company will provide this year have been manufactured, adding that it plans on producing 1.3 billion doses next year. Approximately half will be allocated to the United States, he said. But Bourla said Pfizer is “working very diligently” to increase the amount of doses available because demand is very high. At the same time, he said, the company has not reached an agreement with the U.S. government on when to provide an additional 100 million doses next year. “We can provide them the additional 100 million doses, but right now most of that we can provide in the third quarter,” Bourla said. “The U.S. government wants them in the second quarter so are working very collaboratively with them to make sure that we can find ways to produce more or allocate the doses in the second quarter.” Slaoui said the United States hopes to have about 40 million vaccine doses – enough for 20 million people – distributed by the end of this month. That would include vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna Inc. An outside U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to consider the Moderna vaccine on Thursday, with emergency use expected to be granted shortly after. On Friday, Moderna announced it had struck a deal with the U.S. government to deliver 100 million additional doses in the second quarter.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gabriella Borter, Lisa Lambert, Lisa Baertlein and Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Paul Simao)