RDSA Shell Plc

By Valerie Bauerlein, Rebecca Elliott and Elizabeth Findell 

BEAUMONT, Texas -- Hurricane Laura barreled toward the Texas and Louisiana coasts late Wednesday as a vicious Category 4 storm nearing Category 5, threatening what forecasters described as lethal flooding and widespread wind damage.

Laura was poised to strike the heart of U.S. fuel-making and chemicals production, much of which is located in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast. Nearly half of the nation's refining capacity is on the Gulf Coast, federal data show, with about half of that within Laura's potential path, analytics firm IHS Markit said.

Refineries, chemical plants and ports closed in preparation for the hurricane's arrival, including Saudi Arabian Oil Co.'s Motiva refinery, the nation's largest fuel-making facility.

The fast-moving hurricane continued to gain strength Wednesday evening, with sustained winds of 150 miles an hour, according to the 8 p.m. ET update from the National Hurricane Center, and it could still strengthen before it makes landfall. It is close to the 157 mile an hour threshold of a Category 5 storm. Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles outward, the center said.

Tropical-storm-force winds were beginning to hit parts of Louisiana on Wednesday evening. Laura is projected to make landfall early Thursday

Laura is a storm of historic proportions, with wind speed at landfall on track to surpass Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which made landfall near New Orleans as a Category 3 storm. While the western Gulf Coast is less densely populated than the New Orleans area, Laura, like Katrina, is expected to make landfall in the dead of night, complicating any last-minute evacuation or rescue efforts.

Laura is expected to produce waves as high as 20 feet along portions of the Louisiana coast, with as much as 15 inches of rainfall. The city of Lake Charles, La., braced for as much as 15 feet of flooding, far more than the 8 feet that constitute a major flood in a low-lying area.

TV crews abandoned coastal stations, as did meteorologists with the National Weather Service's local forecasting office.

For Beaumont, a Texas city of about 116,000 people, evacuation orders left it a ghost town, with boarded-up businesses and empty streets. Some were still scrambling to leave Wednesday evening. Arthur Richardson, 63 years old, said he had planned to ride out the storm, as he had during previous hurricanes, but its increasing intensity left him spooked. He decided late Wednesday afternoon to evacuate to Houston.

"When Ike was here, the whoopin' we took, it looked like it was gonna come in through the house," he said of the 2008 hurricane. "I don't want to go through that again."

But Mr. Richardson's neighbor Joan Holmes, 73, who lives with her Chihuahua, Jody, said the previous storms hadn't scared her. She will stay for this one too. She has nowhere else to go and is afraid to drive alone, she said. Another neighbor across the street who is also staying, Edgar Salazar, 38, called out to her to come over if things got bad.

President Trump said his administration was working with state and local governments to help the people of Texas and Louisiana, as well as those in Arkansas, where winds and rain are expected to cause flooding, topple trees and down power lines.

"Listen to local officials," he said in a tweet. "We are with you!"

Forecasters warned of large and destructive waves that could cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park in Texas to Intracoastal City along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Louisiana. The storm surge could reach as far as 30 miles inland, backing up rivers and producing dangerous flooding.

Officials in Texas and Louisiana issued mandatory evacuation orders in more than a dozen coastal cities and counties from Grand Isle, La., to Galveston, Texas, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Voluntary evacuation orders were in place in numerous other jurisdictions.

Laura was moving at 15 miles an hour, far faster than storms including 2018's plodding Hurricane Florence, which allowed time for extensive planning.

The Covid-19 pandemic complicated Wednesday's last-minute preparation. Officials adapted shelters with distancing measures and masks to accommodate those fleeing as the coronavirus continues to grip both states.

In Austin, Texas, evacuees were tested for Covid-19 as they checked into shelters. In Lake Charles, residents fleeing the town by bus were required to wear masks and maintain social distance.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the government booked hundreds of hotel rooms to house evacuees, to avoid crowding traditional shelters.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned residents of coastal southeastern Texas on Wednesday afternoon that they had only a few hours to evacuate before the onset of heavy winds.

"We urge everybody who may be in harm's way to take these few last hours to get out of harm's way," he said. "Because of the power of this storm, if you are unable, or do not get out of harm's way, the reality is for almost a 24-hour time period, there will be no ability for [rescuers] to get in and assist you in any way."

Hurricane Laura intensified rapidly early Wednesday, fueled by warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and unimpeded by winds that could disrupt it. The storm is fast-moving, large and well-defined, said Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center, in a Wednesday video briefing.

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, the hurricane's center was about 155 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, La.

More than 430,000 homes in Texas and Louisiana, with a reconstruction cost value of $88.6 billion, are at risk of storm-surge damage, according to an analysis by CoreLogic Inc., a financial and property data firm.

Mr. Edwards said that the impact from the storm's powerful winds would be stronger than officials initially believed and that all of coastal Louisiana should brace for storm surge. He likened the storm to Hurricane Rita in 2005, which followed a path similar to Laura's, damaging or destroying thousands of homes and inundating coastal communities.

For the nation's oil industry, the risk is considered serious.

Companies had shut down some 84% of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico as of Wednesday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, amounting to about 1.6 million barrels a day or roughly 15% of U.S. oil output.

Even facilities located outside the hurricane's central path braced for possible impacts, sending nonessential personnel home. Campuses were cleaned up to prevent stray items from becoming projectiles in high winds.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC was continuing to operate refining and chemicals facilities in the New Orleans area, where safety manager Martin Padilla was closely monitoring the hurricane's route.

"Any little shift in that track and that puts us potentially closer to tropical- storm-force winds," Mr. Padilla said.

Laura comes fairly early in what has already been an active hurricane season, which stretches from June through November. It is rare for a storm to make landfall in the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm.

Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane specialist at Colorado State University, said that Laura is now the strongest August hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico since Katrina and a historically fierce one. "No Category 4-5 hurricanes have made landfall in extreme eastern Texas or southwest Louisiana on record," since 1851, when record keeping began, he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this season it expects to see as many as 10 hurricanes -- of which three to six are expected to be rated a major hurricane of Category 3 or higher. The prediction is based on warmer ocean temperatures and weaker trade winds in the main storm development region of the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, forecasters have said.

Write to Valerie Bauerlein at valerie.bauerlein@wsj.com, Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com and Elizabeth Findell at Elizabeth.Findell@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2020 22:15 ET (02:15 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.