An arctic blast that gripped much of the U.S. on Saturday knocked out power and cut energy production, driving up heating and electricity prices as people celebrate the holiday.

Plummeting temperatures brought the coldest Christmas Eve on record, and energy systems across the country were strained by rising demand for heat and storm-related damage to transmission lines.

The latest outage numbers are a sharp drop from the 1.8 million U.S. homes and businesses left without power as of early Saturday morning, according to tracking site Poweroutage.us.

Many electric companies continued to ask customers to conserve energy by not running large appliances and turning off unneeded lights. Duke Energy by late Saturday afternoon told customers it had ended the 15-30-minute rolling blackouts across North and South Carolina that it had initiated earlier in the day until additional electricity was available.

Oil refineries in Texas cut gasoline and diesel production on equipment failures, and heating and power prices surged on the losses. Oil and gas output from North Dakota to Texas suffered freeze-ins, cutting supplies.

Some 1.5 million barrels of daily refining capacity along the U.S. Gulf Coast was shut due to the bitterly cold temperatures.

Knocked out were TotalEnergies, Motiva Enterprises and Marathon Petroleum facilities outside Houston. Cold weather also disrupted ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell and Valero Energy plants in Texas that produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Sempra Infrastructure's Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana said weather disrupted its production of liquefied natural gas without providing details. Crews at the 12 million tonne-per-year facility were trying to restore output, it said.

U.S. benchmark oil prices on Friday jumped 2.4% to $79.56, and next-day gas in west Texas jumped 22% to around $9 per million British thermal units, the highest since the state's 2021 deep freeze.

(Reuters with edits)