July 15 (Reuters) - Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on

Sunday he would require CenterPoint Energy ( CNP ) to take

immediate action to improve its hurricane preparation and

response efforts to power outages reported in the greater

Houston area due to Hurricane Beryl.

Abbott said he also asked the Public Utility Commission

(PUC) of Texas to launch an investigation into the company over

its failure to restore power promptly after the hurricane.

"To help Texans in the greater Houston area and to avoid a

repeat of unacceptable power outages, I will give CenterPoint

until the end of the month to provide my office with specific

actions to address power outages and reduce the possibility that

power will be lost during a severe weather event," Abbott said

during a press conference in Houston.

Abbott said he would issue an executive order to impose

actions on CenterPoint geared to keep power on if the company

failed to comply.

CenterPoint, the largest power provider in Texas, said it

was able to restore power to more than 85%, or 1.9 million, of

its impacted customers by Sunday.

There are still about 267,797 CenterPoint customers without

power, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

Beryl, the earliest Category 5 storm on record, made

landfall near the coastal town of Matagorda last Monday,

knocking out power to about 2.7 million homes and businesses in

Texas.

CenterPoint expects to restore power to 90% of all impacted

customers on Monday and is committed to doing a thorough review

of its response to power outages, it said in a statement

following Abbott's press conference.