Rare Snow Imperils Texas Gas Exports, Shuts Louisiana Roads

(Bloomberg) -- A historic winter storm threatened natural gas shipments from one the biggest US export plants while heavy snow shut schools and airports in Houston and highways in New Orleans.

A low-pressure system is dropping bitter cold from Texas to North Carolina, disrupting rail and air travel as snow sweeps throughout the US South. The ripple effects are being felt as far afield as Europe, where gas prices jumped on concern about weather-driven interruptions to US supplies of the fuel.

“The system is going to drop a blanket of snow across the entire Gulf south,” Donald Jones, a weather service meteorologist. “It will be followed by another strong cold front and even more cold temperatures — it is very unusual for the Gulf Coast.”

The Texas grid operator declared a transmission emergency in the heavily populated southeast of the state that lasted roughly seven hours. Meanwhile, the massive Freeport LNG complex shut down, citing “intermittent” power interruptions.

Wind gusts of up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour and heavy snow prompted the first blizzard warning ever for the area from Port Arthur, Texas, to Lafayette, Louisiana. Snow fell as far south as Brownsville, Texas, on the border with Mexico.

Heavy snow and freezing fog were reported at Lake Charles, Louisiana, where winds reached 16 mph, visibility dropped to a quarter mile and the wind chill made it feel like 12F (-11C), the National Weather Service said. 

Deteriorating conditions at Lake Charles prompted a halt to pilot services through at least Wednesday. Without those pilots, oceangoing gas-hauling ships cannot approach the Cameron LNG terminal. 

A wide area from central Texas through the Florida Panhandle is forecast to receive 3 to 6 inches of snow (8 to 15 centimeters), including a record 4 inches in Houston and an all-time high of as much as 8 inches in New Orleans, according to the National Weather Service. 

More than 50 cold temperature records may be broken or tied, mainly across the Gulf Coast up the Appalachian Mountains and across the Ohio Valley through Thursday, according to the Weather Prediction Center. There’ll likely be significant icing across northern Florida.

The frigid weather, which will moderate through the week, is expected to drive up electricity demand and may crimp natural gas and oil production due to freezing water in wells and pipelines. As the freeze gripped West Texas, temperatures in Odessa — the middle of the oil-rich Permian basin — lingered at 13F early Tuesday.

Texas Grid Woes

The Texas electrical grid has a weather watch in place for Tuesday — an early alert that extreme cold driving up heating needs may strain supplies. The state grid operator, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, also issued a transmission emergency alert at 5 a.m. local time for the south and southeastern part of the state “for loss of transmission from freezing precipitation,” according to a website notice. The declaration was lifted around 1 p.m.

Around 12,000 customers, mainly in South Texas, and almost 18,000 customers mostly in North Florida, were without electricity as of midnight Wednesday, according to the PowerOutage.us website.  

Ercot said peak electricity demand is forecast to climb, hitting about 77.6 gigawatts on Tuesday evening. Projections have been volatile and at times have shown demand may test the winter record of 78.3 gigawatts set last January, though the grid operator expects to have enough supply to meet demand.

Snow and ice has snarled transportation throughout the region. Houston airports, including George Bush Intercontinental, William P. Hobby and Ellington, were closed shortly after midnight and will reopen Wednesday morning. 

Most Tuesday flights at Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans were canceled, but most are expected to resume on Wednesday. Jacksonville International Airport in Florida closed following the last scheduled departure on Tuesday, and will reopen noon Wednesday. Many highways and roads across Louisiana became impassible overnight and were closed, including portions of Interstate 10.

Airline tracking service FlightAware reported that 2,319 flights around the US were canceled as of late Tuesday New York time. Another 1,070 flight cancellations are expected on Wednesday. Amtrak had scrubbed multiple trains out of Chicago and throughout the Gulf Coast, the federally funded passenger rail carrier said on its website.

The deep freeze will start to dissipate later in the week, with temperatures rising into the 50F range in Houston Friday and near 70F in Lake Charles, Louisiana by Sunday, according to Jones.

(Updates power outage numbers and details on airports and flights.)

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