Royal Dutch Shell Plc halted some oil production and began evacuating workers from a US Gulf of Mexico platform, the company said on Friday, as a new tropical storm flared. Beta, the 23rd named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, formed in the Bay of Campeche and was forecast to strengthen steadily and become a hurricane by Sunday off the Texas coast, the National Hurricane Center said. Shell said it was removing non-essential employees from its Perdido platform in the western Gulf of Mexico and securing nearby drilling rigs.