1.2m in US Without Electricity

Almost 1.2 million homes and businesses were without power late Friday as Hurricane Matthew blasted Florida, Georgia as well as North and South Carolina in the US, electric companies said. The outages are not as high as utilities had forecast and not expected to reach those levels because the storm has already passed most of the heavily populated southern part of Florida, Reuters reported. On Thursday, NextEra Energy Inc's FPL power company, the biggest in Florida, forecast Matthew could leave as many as 2.5 million homes and businesses without service, some for extended periods of time. With so many power outages, the state's utilities do not have to import as much natural gas as usual to generate electricity. The amount of gas flowing into the state on the Florida Gas Pipeline from Texas and Louisiana was expected to fall by over 22 million cubic meters per day on Friday from an average of 76 billion cubic meters per day over the past 30 days.