Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the Texas power grid operator, announced on Friday that the grid would resume normal operation. About 180000 homes and businesses in the state still had no electricity on Friday, according to Poweroutage.us, a data collection platform for the utility website. More than 14.4 million people were affected by the lack of water, forcing restaurants to give away or throw away expired food.

Us President Joe Biden said earlier that he would declare Texas a major disaster and hoped to visit the state as soon as it returned to normal from widespread water and power cuts.

Dangerously low temperatures continue to haunt Texas, leaving millions of residents without electricity.

AccuWeather, a business forecasting firm, estimates that the winter storm that swept through much of the United States could cost the country up to $50 billion in damage and economic losses, compared with nearly $60 billion for the entire 2020 hurricane season.

Oil prices fell for the second day in a row as Texas crude oil production slowly recovered. New York crude oil futures fell to $59 a barrel, the biggest drop in three months.

Goldman Sachs Group analyst Callum Bruce and others said in a research report on Thursday that most of the oil production lost in the extremely cold weather in Dezhou was offset by a drop in demand, so the impact on oil prices was small and short-term.

As the weather picks up this weekend, crude oil production is likely to restart quickly, resulting in a net loss of about 700000 barrels a day in February, analysts said. The reduction in crude oil consumption in the transportation and petrochemical industries will largely offset the decline in crude oil production.