Updates paragraph 2 with information from CenterPoint
Electricity supply remained unavailable for just under 1.3mn power customers in the greater Houston area on Wednesday following Hurricane Beryl's Monday landfall.
As of Wednesday afternoon, approximately 1.28mn electricity customers were without power, according to US utility CenterPoint Energy. The utility estimated that 983,262 customers had power restored in total. CenterPoint said that while the majority of outages were related to downed poles and wires, certain portions of its service area — particularly along the Texas coast — received "major damage" and would need to be completely rebuilt.
The 2 Bcf/d (57mn m³/d) Freeport LNG terminal in Texas remained offline on Wednesday. "We intended to resume liquefaction operations when post-storm assessments are complete and it is safe to do so," officials at Freeport told Argus.
Large portions of Brazoria County, where Freeport is located, were marked as either "assessment in progress" or "assigned for repair" according to CenterPoint Energy's outage tracker.
Production at the LNG export facility was shut in on 7 July ahead of the Category 1 hurricane making landfall.
The remnants of Beryl were moving over northern Indiana and Ohio on Wednesday, bringing heavy rainfall to the great lakes region, according to the US National Weather Service.
The electric power sector accounts for about 45pc of Texas' gas use, and gas generates about 43pc of the state's electricity, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
