US Barry weakens; some roads, bridges out; chem plants running

Almost three dozen weather-related highway and bridge closures associated with Barry remained in Louisiana on Monday after the storm grew briefly into a hurricane before being downgraded to a tropical storm and now a depression heading  into northern Arkansas, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development said there are currently 33 weather-related closures associated with Barry, mostly from high water and downed trees.

A few came at the US port of Lake Charles, which reported traffic closures from high seas and rough weather related to Barry, according to the Louisiana Maritime Association.

The Port of New Orleans reopened but with a draft restriction. Most other ports on the US Gulf Coast have returned to normal status.

Louisiana’s chemical industry managed to ride out the storm with little or no damage to plants and infrastructure located at Lake Charles and in the state’s so-called chemical corridor along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge, Geismar and Plaquemine.

Only Phillips 66's Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, shut down in preparation for Barry. That refinery can process 247,000 bbl/day of crude.

Barry left 33,000 Cleco customers across the state without power as of late Sunday. The public utility said it was collapsing crews to harder hit areas such as Iberia and St. Mary parishes.

“Roughly 75 percent of the impacted customers are in those parishes,” said James Lass, general manager of Cleco’s distribution operations and emergency management.

Statewide, the number of reported outages fell to 44,380 from 96,102 at the time of landfall, according to poweroutages.us.

Also, Norfolk Southern and other railroad companies had to detour rail shipments around New Orleans after nearby floodgates were closed.

Barry’s impact on drilling and production activity in the Gulf of Mexico caused 69% of the current oil production in the Gulf of Mexico to be shut-in, amounting to the loss of about 1.3m barrels of oil per day, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

The federal agency also estimated that approximately 61% of the Gulf’s natural gas production, or 1,684.20m cubic feet per day, was shut in by the storm.

Almost 40% of the offshore platforms and 47% of the offshore platforms were evacuated, according to the BSEE survey, as of midday on Monday.