Oil production halted in Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Harvey intensifies

A storm in the Gulf of Mexico intensified on Friday, quickly becoming mainland USA's biggest hurricane in a dozen years.

The National Hurricane Centre said Hurricane Harvey had been upgraded to a category 2 storm, armed with winds in excess of 100 miles per hour as it travelled 220 miles northwest just off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas.

Forecast to make landfall late on Friday or early on Saturday morning, the storm was expected to bring a surge as high as 12 feet in sea levels and to hit land with winds of up to 125 mph.

Flood warnings were in effect in Louisiana and parts of northern Mexico as evacuations have already begun in parts of the south Texas coast between Corpus Christi and Galveston, an area that about 5.8m people call home.

"Life-threatening and devastating flooding expected near the coast due to heavy rainfall and storm surge," the hurricane centre said.

Offshore oil platforms owned by the likes of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil recalled workers from refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore drilling in south Texas ceased on Thursday, bring to a halt almost 10% of all offshore crude oil and 15% of natural gas production in the Gulf.

Home to more than 45% of the nation's oil refining capacity, the storm caused oil prices to rise, with West Texas Intermediate futures, the benchmark for US oil prices, rising 0.8% to $47.79 a barrel as of 0851 BST.