03:57 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Associated Press & 11 News Staff Reports

• Many flights to and from South Texas have been canceled in anticipation of Hurricane Emily.

• Shrimpers who normally work the Gulf of Mexico instead spent today securing their boats as looming Hurricane Emily made seas too rough for work.

• More than 200 Texas Army National Guard soldiers have been activated in case they are needed for hurricane duty. An additional 100 Texas State Guard personnel are on standby.

AP

Hurricane Emily is stirring up the surf on South Padre Island.

• Emily has forced cruise lines to detour. Passengers aboard Carnival Cruise Lines' Galveston-based "Elation" will vacation in the Bahamas this week instead of on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and in Belize as originally scheduled.

• Crude oil prices rose today on concerns about supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Emily in the Gulf of Mexico. Many traders were taking a wait-and-see attitude while they gauged mixed news out of the Gulf of Mexico. Storm forecasters have predicted since the weekend that Emily would not hit U-S oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. That calmed fears of major supply disruptions in a region that produces 30 percent of U-S output. But Mexico’s Pemex oil monopoly suspended nearly all of its crude exports due to the storm. It also closed its two main crude oil loading ports and stopped daily production of almost 3 million barrels of oil per day. Fifteen-thousand Pemex workers were evacuated from offshore rigs yesterday.

• In Brownsville, drought-like conditions have persisted for months. Brownsville has gotten 2.85 inches of rain this year as of the end of June, which is about 8 inches below normal. The National Hurricane Center estimated the lower Rio Grande Valley and northeastern Mexico could receive 5 to 10 inches of rain because of the hurricane.