Rita Upgraded to a Category 5 Hurricane
urricane Rita was updated Wednesday afternoon to a Category 5 storm, the strongest of the five hurricane categories, news and weather reports said.
Crude oil prices rose Wednesday in anticipation the storm would hit Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and coastal refineries near Texas, Blooomberg reported.
Benchmark light sweet crude oil futures rose 60 cents Wednesday to close at $66.80 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg said.
Oil hit a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30 after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, causing extensive damage.
The Interior Minerals Management service said Wednesday that about 73% of the Gulf of Mexico's 1.5 million barrel-per-day oil production was shut down, from Katrina's after-effects and the evacuation of rigs as Rita roared through the Gulf.
Numerous companies — BP PLC, Shell Oil, Apache Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhilips Co., Chevron Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. — have all abandoned facilities in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of Rita, the Associated Press reported.
Rita was about 200 miles west of Key West, Fla., and moving on a westward track through the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said. Its sustained winds were at 165 mph, well above the 156-mph threshold needed to be considered a Category 5, center said.
Only three hurricanes — the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys; 1969's Camille, which slammed into Mississippi; and Hurricane Andrew, which tore through south Florida in 1992 — have made U.S. landfall as Catgory 5 storms in the past 100 years.
Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane before weakening slightly and making landfall as a Category 4 storm on Aug. 29. Like Katrina, Rita strengthened rapidly from a tropical storm to a hurricane after moving past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Texas Gulf coast was bracing for a possible landfall as early as Friday night, AP reported.
Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25% of the nation's total oil output. Rita is also thwarting recovery efforts as refineries gear up for winter, the peak season for production of distillate fuels that include heating oil, diesel and jet fuel, AP said.
State, local and federal officials were preparing coastal evacuations in Texas in trying to avoid some of the chaos that followed Katrina’s landfall near New Orleans, AP reported.
