99 for a case of water, thats the type of price gauging that the attorney general is seeing in the state. Hell join us to tell us how hes cracking down on all that have. And next hour President Trump is likely to address this catastrophic flooding in a News Conference with the president of finland. Well bring you that live as soon as it begins. But we start in texas. Contessa brewer is in houston with the latest on the flooding and Brian Sullivan is in galveston with a look at how Hurricane Harvey is affecting refineries contessa, well start with you. Reporter the bayou has overflowed its banks, normally parkland, and this Historic Building here was due to be completely renovated by fall of 201. As you can see, they will probably have to go back at t. Houston at this point is mostly a ghost town. Businesses shut down, employees stranded there are some 3 Million People who work in the metropolitan houston area most of them i would guess are out of work today because the roads are simply impassable. You cant get around the bayou is blocking many of the downtown roads, and the interstates coming in. What we saw at the Convention Center today was people pouring in trying to escape the flooding we have brand new news coming in from interest district the houston schools that were housing shelters of last resort already no longer accept new evacuees they say because of safety reasons they can no longer and accessibility. They can no longer accommodate them so they are now referring people to other shelters in the area and back to the Convention Center were also seeing some talk here of how much money this is going to cost to get houston back in business, and what weve seen is some congressmen who experienced this kind of devastation for Hurricane Sandy saying they will vote money for text, representative peter king one of them, making a snoid kent ide c because he refused to vote for sandy aid. He wouldnt take the bait. Theres plenty of time pore politics and im not going to worry about that my focus is on the people dealing with the tragedy ive been spending the day and night working with officials, speaking with the Vice President , the cabinet agencies and trying to marshall federal assets to save lives. Reporter sara, wilfred, he issued a challenge here in houston to step up to the plate, to bone you and help eve other and make sure employees are safe and help other employees from other Companies Stay safe as well we just got an update on the number of rescues here more than 2,200 rescues have taken place in houston, and they are on going at this hour. Sar area, wilfred. Contessa, what can you tell us about mandatory owe vacations . As we understand it, there are a number in place right now in the houston area, but perhaps coming a little bit too late as people are already finding themselves stranded. Reporter well, and the problem, too, is they are trying to gauge with the release of the army corps of engineers releasing water from these two dams, how much flooding they are going to deal with what weve seen is that the flooding has receded in some parts of downtown houston, even as its taken over other parts of houston, and i talked to a family at the Convention Center about being evacuated, and they said it just came too late it didnt happen, and they were trying to carry a first grader and a third grader through chest high water the dad says hes 64, up to chest height on him trying to get them out of a home that had flooded. It was just devastating. Yeah, absolutely. Contessa, thank you. Be safe, as you make your way around houston to help show us whats happening here. Lets send it over to Brian Sullivan hes in galveston for more hon how the refiners are being impacted by the storm. Brian . Reporter im going to switch it up here, sara and wil, because it goes to what contessa was talking about. I dont know if you can see it buds on our help its a mandatory Evacuation Order for dickinson, texas dickinson texas is a son of 18,000 people roughly where we werier remember all those scenes of people on the interstate being rescued by Good Samaritans with flatbottom boats. We were there in the morning its interstate 45 dickinson, texas, just getting a mandatory Evacuation Order that literally crossed three minutes ago. Now, the question is, and ill get to the story in just a second having been there yesterday twimpts y twice. You cant go east because theres the bay and you cant go north because interstate 45 is flooded. Thats the reason they are probably issuing the Evacuation Order. West is you have to because a number of highways are hurting there because we know that from Police Officers and individuals who have come from there and weve driven a little bit as well so that may be 18,000 people that could be headed here to galveston this may be the only place that they can go and were supposed to get walloped with the storm tomorrow again, guys, mandatory evacuation for dickinson, texas. This is interesting from a lot of perspectives and we talk about the refinery story and 50 of u. S. Refinery capacity is shut down. Dickinson, texas, neighbors texas city texasity is where there are four big refineries, three oil, one chemical north of that are a couple more refineries a lot of the women and men who work in these refineries no doubt live in the dickinson area, so the refiners story, 15 offline. We get that. Theres no ships in the harbor there would be ships here normally they need supplies to run the refineries but they also need people if you dont have people it doesnt matter what the condition of the refinery is, guys, and based on the roads weve driven around and weve showed you and now the Evacuation Orders. Even if these refineries believe they can open up its not clear how long it will take to get the people back. If your house is submerge had had or your family is at risk and your boss says come back to work, i would imagine you would say sorry, boss, family first. I talked to the folks at shell they have a deer park facility that they split with pemex they say theres no timetable on when they will ask workers to return in hurricane ike some of them were closed for weeks or even a mount. That will draw down the 23 days of gas line inventory that the United States currently has so ill leave you with that dickinson, texas, 18,000 people, mandatory evacuation we may not be able to rescue anyone who stays thats what it says. Brian, lets stick on the Evacuation Order as opposed to the refinery story. Reporter sure. Is there a sense of anger on the ground across areas areas in texas that we didnt have clearer evacuations before all of this, particularly in houston . Reporter no, and thats the battle right now i mean, the mayor is saying one thing, the governor is saying another thing, and its really interesting. I mean, what the mayor has said, and ive heard interviews that hes done and seen press conferences where hes not going to order the evacuation of 2 million plus houston has 6 Million People, the Fastest Growing metropolitan area in the United States and the mayor made the point that if he ordered the mandatory evacuation, where are they going to go. Reporter weve not been all over, but i can tell you this much where we have been, pretty much everywhere from just south of houston, we were in bay town which is slightly northwest of houston northeast of houston today to here. Youre driving along, and theres a car in ten feet of water or a gas station under water. I showed those pictures earlier. I dont know where the people would go thats the problem the roads are getting blocked and if were getting more rain like they say were going to get and i hope we dont. Its not colleagues, sara, where all those people would go anywhere thats the problem the airports are close asked, and a lot of the roads are closed yeah. Good point nobody expected the rainfall to be this relentless i think and to last this long. Still not peaking. Reporter what did i hear well see you the next hour i was going to say houston airport got 16 inches of rain. The previous record was 8 inches, think about it doubled it. Brian, outstanding stuff. Thank you very much. Brian sullivan for us in texas lets talk more about the impact on gasoline and also the refineries joining us now is Anthony Grisanti and on the phone neal dingman from suntrust, robinson and humphrey the in terms of how big an impact this has on whether its wti prices or gasoline prices are, is the key thing how long the water now remains stopping workers getting back into those refineries well, thats absolutely try i mean, for the people this is devastating, and it will continue for a lot of days for the refineries though, i watched the futures market sell off on the close today gasoline actually lost about three cents. The gas graph came in about 1 towards the end of the day and the spread came in, the sep och spread came in as a relief on thursday we transition from the summer gasoline contract to the winter gasoline contract which means well save 15 cents a gallon right there, and thats how much gasoline prices have rallied at this point. We saw a 1. 78 print in spot month gasoline early last night or when the market first opened. I dont think were actually going to get there again i think well stay below that. The october contract is trading about 1 57 right now and as i said friday we transition to that contract, so the there might be a little bit of relief coming down, but i think its still too early to tell because theres been so much flooding in the refinery areas. Neal, whats the update how much Refining Capacity is actually offline at this point hand how big of a deal is that going to be for gas prices you know, its going to be were looking at go ahead. That was to neal. Go ahead, neal. I would say its about 3 Million Barrels of the right now its 25 of the gulf and in growing because you have not only in the gulf of mexico but along had the entire coastline, so right now i look at not only, you know, again, as anthony was saying, not only on the gasoline prize, but on oil prices i mean, why are oil prices bearish today is because you actually have the refinery of about 1. 7 million now climbing up to 3 Million Barrels so that reduces total demand for oil of about 2. 1 Million Barrels which more than outweighs the shutin production of the gulf and a little bit weve seen in the eagleford so far of about call it 1. 5 Million Barrels so the key to watch for oil prices then is going to be how much of the reduction of supply which certainly is bullish, but how much is this outweighed by the reduction of demand which right now thats whats certainly outweighing it causing oil prices to be down by 3 or more today. Neal, talk to us about the companies that are most affected, and why do we see divergence in performance, the likes of chevron down today and marathon up . Reporter yes what were seeing is really like ike you have certainly a lot of the refiners and producers in the gulf of mexico to your point that has a lot of facilities in the area like chevron that are shutting down. Those areas once they have to shut down production are certainly going to be impacted and so, again, that is about over 20 of u. S. Production is coming from the gulf and now they have already shut down over 25 of this entire production. Thats been shut down, but whats different than 2008 is you now have about 15 of the u. S. Production coming from the eagleford shell around the san antonio area, and the commission mentioned this morning they have almost shut down almost half a Million Barrels a day of that so that, too, i havent heard too much your guests talk about that we hear a lot about the gulf coast and the gulf coast operators, but theres a ton of operators in the eagleford shell along the san antonio area that depending it on how much more rain we get in this area will really be impacted again, its almost as much as they produce in the gulf they produce in eagleford. Good point. The first time that weve seen a storm straight the heart of our Energy Infrastructure since the u. S. Has been so energy dependant and such a strong producer anthony, talk to me about levels wti closing below 47 brent coand others higher on the International Demand i guess for oil prices which levels are you going to be watching here . Yeah, certainly doesnt stop there. Thats actually a good point about the oil demand i read some refiners are actually at reduced rates because they cant get crude oil into the refiners. They are actually running are out of supply, but im looking at the 45 level for wti if we break that, we could probably go to 22, but i dont expect it. Once the refineries start to come back up, whether friday or the beginning of next woke youll see demand for crude oil pick up, and that should support prices. Quickly, weve seen another day where copper has gone up 2 and that trend of seeing the Industrial Metals go up and oil flat or down over the summer continues today. Clearly the hurricane impacting the oil price. Does that mean there could be a bigger snap back in the oil price when that goes away because that trend continues, the gap between the industrial and metal prices over the summer continues. If this happened, say, in the midst of the driving season i would say yes but now were starting to run down and were running into refinery a minute men where they turn around for winter will be a snapback but not as much as you think. Copper up because of the down dollar, and theres also a lot of repairs, infrastructure, housing, things like that. They are going to need copper. Anthony, thank you very much. Also neal, thank you very much. Thank you weve got an update now on harveys impact on United Airlines phil lebeau has more details phil, this is one you highlighted as being heavily affected right units hub is in hues top, one of its hubs is in houston and because Houston International is shut down. Its not just people who are flying to houston but allots in that area. They will be offering travel waivers for 15 pirpts, as far west as san antonio and far east as shreveport and new orleans and thats because so many people will fly into Houston International and then catch a reason nal jet to one of these other airports if you cant get into Houston International, you wont make it to your final destination and thats why united is pushing these travel waivers or offering these travel waivers for these 15 airports for travel through september 5th. Guys, back to you. Yeah. Doing what they can can, i guess. Phil, thank you. You bet. Less than 45 minutes to go here before closing bell, and weve seen the dow and the s p in pretty tight ranges all day long the dow down 26 points, but youre seeing a impact from the storm. Home depot is leading for instance, travelers the Big Insurance Company is lagging in the dow. The nasdaq remains positive t. Tech has been a bright spot all session long. Devastating flooding in houston has put a focus on the federal governments ability to offer aid through fema weve got the latest on femas financials which are somewhat of a question mark next. Indeed. And price gouging is a rising concern as supplies fall short in coastal texas up ahead well talk to the Texas Attorney general ken paxon about that situation were back in a couple of minutes here on closing bell. We, the people, are tired of being surprised with extra monthly fees. We want hd. And every box and dvr. All included. Because we dont like surprises. Yeah. Like changing up the celebrity at the end to someone more handsome. And talented. Really. And british. Switch from cable to directv. Get 4 rooms with hd, dvr, and every box included for 25 a month. Call 1800directv. The governor of texas gust saying that 18 counties in texas have been granted federal disaster declaration which actually triggers the involvement of fema and gets the money flowing to those counties. Ylan mui has more on the financials of the federal Emergency Management agency. Ylan, what can you tell us femas budget for feeling with these major disasters is 6. 7 billion this fiscal year and as of friday morning, before harvey hit texas, the agency had 1. 8 billion left in its special Disaster Fund. A gop aide tells me right now that should be enough to cover femas response to the hurricane and so far there has not been a new request from the white house for more money, but assuming that there is a deal on capitol hill on a spending bill, that Disaster Fund will get refilled once the new fiscal year begins. Theres also a lot of murmuring in washington about the potential of a broad aid package for victims of harvey including more money for fema, maybe reauthorizings the National FloodInsurance Program which is supposed to expire on september 30th, but it appears unlikely that lawmakers will be able to pull together an aid bill as soon as next week when they return to washington from recess today House Democratic leader nancy pelosi put out this statement. American families deserve to know that their government will be there for them when disaster strikes, without question and without hesitation so, guys, perhaps there is room for democrats and r