Miami - Tropical Storm Emily formed over the Caribbean on Monday, far from energy production facilities in the US Gulf of Mexico but posing a possible threat to them nonetheless.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said Emily, the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was packing maximum sustained winds of 65km/h as it formed near the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles islands.
It was located about 80km west-southwest of Dominica on Monday evening and on a track across the northeastern Caribbean to bear down on Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, on Tuesday night, the hurricane centre said.
The storm threatened to dump heavy rain on both Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. It posed no immediate threat to oil and gas production facilities in the US Gulf of Mexico. But NHC forecaster Michael Brennan said it was too soon to say whether Emily would eventually churn into the Gulf.
“There's a lot of disparity in the track guidance here,” said Brennan. “The biggest uncertainty is what's going to happen to the storm if it goes over Hispaniola... If it remains a stronger deeper system it's probably more likely to turn north,” he said.
The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 30 percent of US oil production and 12 percent of natural gas output, according to the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The NHC said Emily could intensify to hurricane strength by the weekend. Even if that happened, the storm was unlikely to strengthen into more than a low-level Category 1 hurricane, however. - Reuters