Tropical Storm Fay, simmering off the Texas and Louisiana coasts Friday, remained stationary and appeared to be organizing slightly, and a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning remained in effect from Intracoastal City, LA to Port Aransas, TX late Friday.

The concern appeared to be highest for Houston-area residents, who may hold memories of the devastating path carved by Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. Meanwhile, companies operating offshore reported few problems. “”There doesn’t seem to be much concern in the offshore community,” El Paso Corp. spokesman Aaron Woods told NGI late Friday.

However, while El Paso reported no problems on any of its three offshore connections, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. reported shutting in 43 bbl/d and 5.7 MMcf/d, and Exxon Mobil evacuated a drilling rig — but no production platforms, according to Carol Fagot of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in New Orleans.

Kimberly Nelson of Enron also reported that three small platforms were shut down, affecting MOPS, but Gas Control reported that it was “still running about 100 MMcf/d, which is fairly normal. Loss must have been minimal,” she added. The storm also had no effect as of Friday afternoon on Florida Gas Transmission, she said.

“We are hearing that Fay is not strong enough to affect most offshore operations,” said MMS’s Fagot.

Three Gulf pipelines, Columbia Gulf (CG), Tetco and Transco, had reported on production shut-ins Friday. CG and Tetco are offshore Louisiana; Transco has systems offshore Texas, where the storm appeared to be organizing.

“If it stays its present course, it will miss all of our offshore Louisiana production,” a Tetco spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman at Transco also reported “no impact” to its operations, and added that “gas control doesn’t expect any.” She added that the “storm flared up so quickly, but it doesn’t seem to be strong enough to affect production.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, the center of Fay remained “so poorly defined,” on Friday, that the “changes in the location of the center do not necessarily represent the true motion of the overall weather system.” It expected a slow motion toward the west-northwest or northwest through Saturday. Maximum sustained winds were near 60 mph, with higher gusts, and additional strength was expected by Saturday afternoon.

Onshore, schools were closed for the day in Galveston County on worries of flooding as the slow storm stalled over the region. Along with the storm warning, a hurricane watch also was issued from Port O’Connor, TX to High Island, TX. No forced evacuations onshore were under way, but coastal residents in the warning area were advised to voluntarily leave or take storm precautions.

©Copyright 2002 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.