Gulf Coast Ports Slowly Reopening to LNG After Beryl Strikes

By the time Hurricane Beryl barreled across the Texas coastline battering everything in its path, the storm was weakening into a tropical storm. Its wrath remained in force, however, bringing LNG water transport to a halt and exposing millions without power to perilous Texas summer temperatures.

The port of Corpus Christi reopened on July 8 in the aftermath, according to VesselFinder. And two LNG tankers were loading at the Cheniere LNG facility by July 9 at Corpus.

LNG terminals at Sabine Pass and Lake Charles had also reopened. Three LNG tankers were at berth at Cheniere Energy’s docks at Sabine on July 9. At Lake Charles, no LNG tankers were at berth or underway in the morning for Calcasieu Pass LNG or the Sempra Energy facility there.

Meanwhile, the port at Freeport and the Houston Ship Channel remained closed the morning of July 9, according to VesselFinder. Tankers that had returned on July 8 were staged offshore at anchor awaiting reopening. LNG tankers for loading at Freeport LNG were among those poised to launch.

The storm had blown through Matagorda Bay, west of Houston, continuing north into Robertson County, where Comstock Resources and Aethon Energy have deep Haynesville Shale wildcats underway, according to MyRadar.

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The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, reported July 9 that Texas power demand within its ISO borders was 15% less than previously expected.

More than 2 million customers remained without power in Houston and throughout CenterPoint Energy’s service area on July 9, according to its post to social media platform X. CenterPoint is the regulated utility that owns most of the power transmission and other infrastructure in the path of Beryl.

The company posted on the social media platform that power would be restored to 1 million customers by July 10.

However, by the morning of July 9, no trucks were in Houston yet , according to local television station KHOU, citing CenterPoint, in an X post.

CenterPoint turned off its power outage tracker in May after a weather event that crumbled main transmission infrastructure and left 2 million accounts without power.

Most of East Texas went dark on the morning and throughout the day of July 8.

The outage tracker PowerOutage.US noted that in counties CenterPoint serves, the utility was not reporting its outage locations. Instead, it provided estimates, and its numbers were likely underestimated.

In a workaround, X poster BBQ Bryan reported on the evening of July 8 that the Whataburger restaurant app could be used as an outage tracker, showing locations lit in orange and dark in gray.

The tip was trending through the morning of July 9.

An X poster wrote, “Using the Whataburger app to track power outages after a hurricane Is probably the most Houston thing I can possibly imagine.”

Whataburger is a Texas-born chain.