Hurricane Ike to hit Texas coast by early Saturday

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike will hit the oil-rich northeast Texas coast near Galveston by early Saturday, likely as a Category 2 storm with winds of more than 100 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center forecast.

Ike is still a Category 2 storm with winds near 105 mph but could reach Category 3 strength, with winds of 111 to 130 mph, before hitting the coast, the NHC said in its 11 a.m. EDT report.

The center of the storm was located about 295 miles east of Corpus Christi, Texas, and about 195 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas, the NHC said.

Energy traders watch for storms that could enter the Gulf of Mexico and threaten U.S. oil and natural gas infrastructure along the coast.

Commodities traders likewise watch storms that could hit agriculture crops such as citrus and cotton in Florida and other states along the Gulf Coast to Texas.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the NHC estimated an area of disturbed weather, including some of the remnants of Tropical Storm Josephine about 200 miles east of the southeastern Bahamas, had a less than 20 percent chance of developing over the next 48 hours.

The weather models forecast the disturbed weather will reach Florida's east coast over the next few days, with one model showing the system crossing the Florida Peninsula and briefly entering the Gulf of Mexico before returning inland on the Florida Panhandle.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino, editing by Matthew Lewis)