Storm spares Oman's oil assets

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MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- People dragged soaked bedding and carpets from homes yesterday after Cyclone Gonu's winds blew down trees and power lines and its rains sent torrents of water and mud surging through Oman's seaside capital, a city often called the Arab world's tidiest.

After pummeling normally hot and dry Oman and Iran's southeastern coast, Gonu weakened to a tropical storm and was expected to dissipate into a rainstorm as it moved over the sea toward Iran. At least 28 persons were dead, most of them in Oman, and 26 were missing.

The storm spared the region's oil installations, and oil prices dipped on world markets.

Cleanup crews fanned out across Muscat. Bulldozers scraped away layers of mud and rocks that washed down from the mountains when heavy rain flooded canyons and dry riverbeds Wednesday night. Soldiers pumped water from low-lying roads.

While many people began cleaning out soggy houses, others searched for cars and other vehicles that floated away in the roiling waters. Grassy fields lay under several feet of water, and lush palm and eucalyptus groves were flattened.

Strong waves still battered a beachfront normally packed with European tourists, and the usually sparkling blue sea resembled a foamy chocolate milk.

People told of spending a night in fear as turgid water flooded their homes, carrying away refrigerators and furniture and leaving streets gouged by sinkholes and caked in mud.

"The water broke through the walls. It came inside the house. It swept everything out," said Nidhal al-Masharafi, 31, who spent the night on his rooftop with his wife and six children.

He said he found his 2006 Subaru Outback a half-mile away sitting atop a taxi.

"The capital, Muscat, became a lake," said a spokesman for the Oman Royal Police, Abdullah al-Harthi.

Gonu was downgraded to a tropical depression yesterday, and it was rapidly losing energy as it moved across the Gulf of Oman toward Iran.

The storm was expected to spare Iran's offshore oil installations, which lie more than 120 miles to the west, oil officials and the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

Despite earlier predictions the storm could disrupt the oil market, analysts said yesterday that its impact on prices was minimal, with most of the upward movement occurring when the news broke that Gonu was headed toward Oman.

"By now, the whole thing must have calmed down, because the storm passed through. ... The impact was when the news [first] came out. Now the people have forgotten about that," said Manouchehr Takin, an analyst at the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies.

The price for Brent crude fell after confirmation that Oman's main oil port didn't sustain major damage. In London, July Brent crude futures dropped 17 cents to $70.85 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

The Iranian state-owned Shana oil and energy news Web site said Iran would stop operations at two offshore platforms as a precaution, but there were no reports of difficulties at Iranian oil installations.