Forecasters said Alex was moving slowly away from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The storm, however, is not expected to hurt current oil-capture systems at the BP oil spill or the company’s plans to drill of a pair of relief wells intended to plug the leak by August, a BP executive said in Houston.
Protectively, Shell Oil Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Apache Corp evacuated nonessential workers from platforms near the forecast path of Alex. Shell also shut subsea production at the Auger and Brutus platforms during the weekend.
A hurricane watch has been issued for the coast of Texas south of Baffin bay to La Cruz in Mexico.
The ports of Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas, which handle 80 percent of all Mexico’s oil export shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, have been closed since on Sunday due to strong surf in the area.
State-run oil giant Pemex said its platforms in the Campeche Sound were working normally on Sunday and that there was no evacuation plan yet due to Alex. Pemex officials were expecting updated reports from their facilities in the Gulf on Monday morning.
The storm is due to make landfall again between Brownsville, Texas, and Ciudad Madero in Mexico at mid-week, mostly sparing BP oil collection efforts south of Louisiana.
Alex, the first named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, had sustained winds of about 95 kph with higher gusts and was located about 135 km west-northwest of Campeche, Mexico. The system was moving north-northwest at 11 kph.
“Some strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days and Alex is expected to become a hurricane on Tuesday,” the US National Hurricane Center said on its latest update.
At least 10 people were killed in Central America in accidents related to Alex, local authorities reported.
Two people died in El Salvador from flooding, two others were killed in a landslide in Guatemala and five people were swept away by swelling rivers in Nicaragua, emergency officials said.
Alex was expected to bring 7 to 15 cm of rain to the Yucatan Peninsula, southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala through Tuesday. Isolated amounts of up to 23 cm were possible over mountainous areas. Forecasters warned the rain could cause flash floods and mudslides.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 and meteorologists predict this year will be a very active one.
Hurricanes feed on warm water and the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are higher than usual this year.
