Tropical storm Felix could become Atlantic hurricane

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Felix could become a hurricane Saturday night or on Sunday and may be a Category 3 hurricane by the middle of next week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Felix, which has maximum winds of near 70 mph (110 kph) and is moving west, skirted the Caribbean island of Grenada overnight and would pass near or to the north of the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

"Felix could become a hurricane later tonight or on Sunday," said the hurricane center said on Saturday afternoon.

A projection on the Weather Underground Web site showed Felix becoming a Category 1 hurricane at 8 a.m. (1200 GMT) on Sunday.

"We are forecasting it to be a Category 3 hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean Sea by the middle of the week," forecaster Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center said in Miami.

There were no indications the storm would reach the Gulf of Mexico, home to a third of U.S. domestic crude oil and 15 percent of natural gas production. But long-range forecasts are unreliable, the center said.

Energy markets have watched tropical storms and hurricanes closely since the devastating Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, when storms like Ivan, Katrina and Rita disrupted supplies.

At 2 p.m. EDT, Felix was located 420 miles south-southeast of Puerto Rico and was moving at about 18 mph (30 kph), with winds expected to strengthen in the next 24 hours, the hurricane center said.

Computer models predicted the sixth named storm of the year in the Atlantic basin would head into the Caribbean in the general direction of Mexico and Central America.

Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao were under tropical storm warnings, alerting residents to expect storm conditions within 24 hours. But a similar warning along with parts of the northern coast of Venezuela was discontinued.

The 2007 hurricane season, expected to be a busy one, is approaching its peak. Most storms occur from August 20 to mid-October, with September 10 marking the top.

The only hurricane of the Atlantic season to date, Dean, turned into a monster Category 5 storm, the highest level on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.

Dean hammered Martinique, St. Lucia and other islands in the Lesser Antilles chain, blasted Jamaica and then struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before dissipating over the Mexican mainland.

It killed at least 27 people when it moved across the Caribbean and Mexico in late August.