Royal Dutch Shell Plc halted some oil production and began evacuating workers from a U.S. Gulf of Mexico platform, the company said on Saturday, as a new tropical storm flared, Reuters reported. Beta, the 23rd named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, formed in the Bay of Campeche and was forecast to gradually strengthen and soak the Texas coast all week, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. The NHC reduced its maximum wind forecast to 75 miles per hour (120 kph), just above tropical storm intensity. Drier air aloft will limit the storm's strength and may prevent it from becoming a hurricane, the NHC said in a Saturday update.