Some 140,000 Entergy customers still without power

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than 140,000 customers in Entergy Corp's service area in Louisiana remained without power Tuesday, more than a week after Hurricane Gustav hit the coast on September 1 and caused massive damage to the company's transmission system.

Over the past week, Entergy has restored power to more than 789,000 of the 964,000 customers who lost service in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

The remaining outages are in the hardest hit parts of Louisiana. Entergy predicted its team of 13,000 restoration workers would return power to most customers by the end of the week. Some homes and businesses, however, may have to wait until the end of the month.

As Entergy restores power from Hurricane Gustav, the company said it is monitoring Hurricane Ike and planning for the possibility of Ike impacting its territory later this week.

Although the forecast track can change, Ike, which is beating up Cuba, is now forecast to hit South Texas near the Mexico border - far from Entergy's service area.

Gustav cut power to more than 1.8 million homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast and shut more than a dozen oil refineries and numerous oil and natural gas pipelines and other energy facilities.

Entergy said it restored power to all 12 of the oil refineries and petrochemical plants affected by the storm. Even with power it still takes days or weeks for a refinery to ramp up to normal production, depending on the damage.

Hurricane Gustav caused the second largest number of outages in Entergy's 95-year history behind only Hurricane Katrina, which left 1.1 million out in 2005.

Both of Entergy's nuclear power reactors in Louisiana remained out of service Tuesday morning. Entergy shut the 1,152 MW Waterford 3 reactor before Gustav hit and the 967 MW River Bend reactor after the storm hit.

One MW powers about 500 homes in Entergy's service territory.

Entergy, of New Orleans, owns and operates about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes power to 2.7 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; editing by Jim Marshall)