By Arathy Somasekhar

HOUSTON, July 12 (Reuters) - About a million homes and

businesses in Texas remained without power on Friday, five days

after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, with fierce winds and rain

that knocked down trees and electricity infrastructure.

CenterPoint Energy, the largest power provider in

Texas, said about 870,000 of its customers remained affected. It

has restored power for about 1.4 million customers in the days

since Beryl, according to its website.

Frustrations mounted amongst residents as temperatures in

Houston rose and the Heat Index topped 100 degree Fahrenheit

(38°C). Some businesses remained closed due to lack of power,

while residents were forced to discard hundreds of dollars'

worth of groceries.

"The recent hurricane was only a Category 1. We will likely

face more hurricanes, and they could be stronger. Are we going

to have the same problems? Will the company in charge of

repairing the country be ready this time?" Soonkack Kook,

founder of a coffee shop in Midtown Houston, said in an

Instagram post.

Meteorologists at Colorado State University this week raised

their forecast for the severity of the 2024 hurricanes and

called Beryl a harbinger of what could be a very active season.

They now anticipate six major storms, categorized by winds over

111 miles per hour, up from an earlier forecast of five.

Beryl was the earliest Category 5 storm on record when it

developed over a week ago, but hit the Texas coast as a Category

1 storm with winds around 80 miles per hour.

Kook's coffee shop has opened a pop-up outside as it has not

had power for five days and cannot afford to be closed for that

long.

Local residents without power looked for hotels and bookings

on vacation rental platforms like Airbnb ( ABNB ), but few

options were available, many at high price points. Some said

they were considering traveling out of town for the weekend,

unable to cope with the lack of power and heat.

ENERGY RECOVERY

Beryl made landfall on Monday near Matagorda Bay in South

Texas, only about 40 miles (64.37 km) from Freeport, Texas,

which houses the country's third largest liquefied natural gas

facility as well as numerous chemical facilities.

Freeport LNG, the third largest liquefied natural gas

facility in the U.S., began pulling in small volumes of natural

gas for processing on Thursday, according to data from financial

firm LSEG. The company has not provided an operational update

since Sunday, when it said it ramped down production.

Chemical maker Dow had a process instability due to

hurricane Beryl and plant production rates were reduced, the

company said in a filing to regulators.

Olin, another chemical company, declared a force

majeure on Wednesday for some product and aromatic shipments

after Beryl caused damage to its Freeport facilities.

Chemical maker BASF said its facilities in Texas

experienced minimal impact from Hurricane Beryl and the site was

working to resume normal operations.

Formosa Plastics, which temporarily shut down operations at

its Point Comfort plant after a malfunction with a gas

compressor system, expects operations to be back to normal by

the end of next week as it did not receive any severe damage

from Beryl.

Ports along the Gulf Coast, which had closed ahead of the

hurricane, largely resumed operations and vessel traffic.

The impact on refineries and offshore production platforms

were also limited.