By Chris Baltimore
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike gathered strength as itchurned through the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters on Wednesdayon a track that would skirt the heart of the U.S. offshore oilpatch before slamming into the Texas coast on Saturday.
Ike grew to a Category 2 storm with 100 mph (155 kph) windsand could come ashore as a ferocious Category 4 storm on thefive-step intensity scale with winds of 132 mph (213 kph), theNational Hurricane Centre said.
But the latest projections pointed Ike toward the middle ofthe Texas coast, skirting to the west of the main region foroffshore production in the gulf, which provides a quarter ofU.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.
U.S. crude oil prices hit a fresh five-month low of $101.36a barrel on Wednesday as weak demand and a strong dollar offseta surprise OPEC production cut agreement and back-to-backhurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that have cut deeply into U.S.energy supplies.
At 5 p.m. EDT (10 p.m. British time), the hurricane centresaid in its latest advisory Ike was 720 miles (1,155 km) eastof Brownsville, Texas and 370 miles (590 km) south-southeast ofthe mouth of the Mississippi River.
New Orleans, still scarred by Hurricane Katrina, whichkilled 1,500 people and caused $80 billion ( 45 billion pounds)in damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, appeared to be out ofdanger.
Texas officials ordered some residents in low-lyingMatagorda and Brazoria counties to evacuate. Mandatoryevacuations had been illegal in Texas but the state changed itslaws after Hurricane Rita in 2005. So far evacuation totals arenowhere near the 2 million people who fled Louisiana coastalcities in the path of Hurricane Gustav.
Other residents were boarding up homes and businesses toprepare for hurricane-force winds that could arrive on Friday.
"Right now, we have people coming in and out," said SteveProbert, who works at a hardware store in the resort communityof Port Aransas, across the Laguna Madre from Corpus Christi."They're buying everything we have under the sun."
President George W. Bush declared a federal emergency forTexas, allowing some federal disaster assistance.
BUSES NOT BODY BAGS
Ike's current track would see it hit the Texas coast justnorth of Corpus Christi, a major Gulf Coast oil refining hub.
But about 250 miles of Texas coastline from Matagorda Bayto Brownsville on the Mexico border are on alert for possiblemandatory evacuations due to wide uncertainty over the storm'spath. A line of buses made their way from Corpus Christi toinland shelters as the city evacuated some elderly and sickresidents.
Some residents in Brazoria County south of the low-lyingcoastal city of Galveston were ordered to evacuate.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that some resident would likelyresist evacuation calls but said he wants to see "buses, notbody bags." Perry put 1,350 buses on standby to carry possibleevacuees.
Torrential rains from the storm could be more damaging thanits wind blasts, especially for heavily populated areas in theRio Grand Valley which already took a soaking from HurricaneDolly in July.
In the lower Florida Keys, rainfall of up to 3 inches (7.6cm) was possible and the area could also face storm surges,large waves and isolated tornadoes and waterspouts onWednesday, U.S. forecasters said. Southwest Florida wasexpected to see up to four 4 inches (10 cm) of rain.
CUBA TAKES DIRECT HIT
In Cuba, big waves and storm surges were expected tosubside on Wednesday, but heavy rains on the western end of theisland could produce flash floods, the centre said.
Ike has already caused widespread damage in Cuba.
Few official figures have emerged, but state-run mediashowed a panorama of destruction across the island, stillreeling from the more powerful Hurricane Gustav 10 days ago.
Ike struck eastern Cuba on Sunday with 120 mph (195 kph)winds and torrential rains that destroyed buildings, wiped outthe electricity grid, toppled trees, levelled crops includingsugar cane fields and turned rivers into roaring torrents.
A total of 2.6 million people were evacuated before Ike, orabout 22 percent of the country's 11 million population, butofficials said four people died in the eastern provinces.
Before Cuba, Ike hit Britain's Turks and Caicos Islands andthe southern Bahamas as a Category 4 hurricane.
Floods triggered by its torrential rains were blamed for atleast 71 deaths in Haiti, where Tropical Storm Hanna killed 500people last week.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Franks, Esteban Israel, MarcFrank, Rosa Tania Valdes and Nelson Acosta in Havana, JimForsyth in San Antonio, Jim Loney in Miami; Editing by DoinaChiacu and Cynthia Osterman)
