By Adrian Virgen
CAMPECHE, Mexico (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Alex was likely to become a hurricane on Tuesday, delaying BP Plc's efforts to increase siphoning capacity at the gushing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
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 told reporters 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.
Oil prices fell towards $78 per barrel on Monday as most forecasters predicted the storm would pass southwest of major U.S. offshore oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
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 60 mph (95 kph) with higher gusts and was located about 85 miles (135 km) west-northwest of Campeche, Mexico. The system was moving north-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).
"Some strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days and Alex is expected to become a hurricane on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said on its latest update.
DEATHS IN CENTRAL AMERICA
At least nine 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 told Reuters.
Alex was expected to bring 3 to 6 inches (7 to 15 cm) of rain to the Yucatan Peninsula, southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala through Tuesday. Isolated amounts of up to 10 inches (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 November 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.
(Additional reporting by Jose Cortazar in Cancun, Nelson Renteria in El Salvador, Sarah Grainger in Guatemala, Ivan Castro in Nicaragua and Mica Rosenberg in Mexico City; Editing by Vicki Allen)
