Crude oil tanker ships were temporarily unable to reach the five Houston-area refineries on Monday after a seven-mile section of the Houston Ship Channel was shut by the U.S. Coast Guard for the search for a person who jumped or fell from a bridge over the waterway.
_0">No ships were waiting to transit the portion of the ship channel north of the Fred Hartman bridge connecting the cities of La Porte and Baytown, Texas, as of 12:30 p.m. CDT (1730 GMT), according to the Coast Guard Houston Vessel Traffic Center.
The shutdown would end as soon as the person who came off the bridge was located, the Coast Guard said.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)