Ida soaks Gulf Coast, disrupts energy output

MOBILE, Alabama (Reuters) – A weakened Tropical Storm Ida drenched the U.S. Gulf Coast and oil installations on Monday, shutting down nearly 30 percent of Gulf energy production.

The center of the ragged storm was expected to cross the coast near Mobile, Alabama, early on Tuesday.

At one time a Category 2 hurricane, Ida's threat eased as winds dropped to 65 miles per hour (100 km per hour). Ida was forecast to weaken quickly as it moved inland, turning east over northern Florida.

A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter plucked two workers from a storm-damaged oil rig south of New Orleans. Ida is blamed for 124 flood and mudslide deaths in El Salvador.

The Coast Guard closed the Port of Mobile, halting traffic on Mobile Bay, and authorities closed schools and government offices in coastal counties in Alabama and Florida, telling residents of flood-prone areas and mobile homes to evacuate.

An overnight curfew was issued for part of the Alabama coast.

Ida, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm earlier on Monday, posed the first real storm threat of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season to Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production, and forced some companies to shut down off-shore platforms and evacuate personnel.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service said Ida had shut down 29.6 percent of Gulf oil production and 27.5 percent of gas output.

Energy markets have been hypersensitive to Gulf cyclones since the devastating 2004 and 2005 seasons, when storms like Katrina disrupted U.S. output and sent pump prices soaring.

With Ida weakening, most offshore oil rigs in the Gulf won't see any damage, said Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at private forecaster Planalytics Inc.

"I think that by tomorrow it will be normal operations across the production region," Rouiller said on Monday.

OIL PRICES RISE

Oil rose more than $2 to near $80 a barrel on Monday on fears of supply disruptions.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only U.S. terminal capable of handling the largest tankers, stopped unloading ships due to stormy seas. And the Independence Hub, a major offshore natural gas processing facility, also was closed.

A quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas are produced from fields in the Gulf, and the coast is home to 40 percent of the nation's refining capacity.

At 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT on Tuesday, the storm was about 100 miles south-southwest of Mobile, Alabama, and was moving north at about 13 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

A tropical storm warning was in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, eastward to Aucilla River, Florida. Some 2.8 million residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida could feel the storm's effects, the U.S. Census Bureau said.

The warning area included New Orleans, which is still recovering from the devastation of Katrina.

By nightfall, the region was already being pounded by heavy rain and there were reports of flooded streets.

In Mobile, Governor Bob Riley warned residents to be on guard, and declared a state of emergency for the state.

"At this point, we don't know how substantial this damage could be," Riley said. "We hope it continues to dissipate."

A few coastal Alabama businesses boarded up their windows but many residents and visitors seemed to dismiss the late-season storm as little more than a nuisance.

"Why do you think I waited until November to come down here?" asked Lisa Pouncey, a visitor from North Carolina.

Local authorities reported flooding from waves and storm surge at the developed west end of Dauphin Island, the barrier island off Mobile that was heavily damaged by Katrina in 2005.

Schools, beaches and parks closed in the Florida Panhandle, the same area hit in August by Tropical Storm Claudette, the only other cyclone to make a U.S. landfall during the 2009 Atlantic season, one of the least active in a decade.

In El Salvador, rivers burst their banks and hillsides collapsed under rains triggered by Ida, cutting off parts of the mountainous interior from the rest of the nation.

The bulk of the Central American country's coffee is grown in areas far from the worst effects of the flooding but the national coffee association had no estimate of damage.

(Additional reporting by Jose Cortazar and Michael O'Boyle in Cancun, Nelson Renteria in San Salvador, Ivan Castro in Managua, Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing by Jim Loney and Jane Sutton in Miami; Editing by Eric Beech).