"It's premature to say everything is clear," PFC energy analyst Seth Kleinman said after Rita roared ashore near the Louisiana-Texas border over the weekend.

Rita hit a "tight market" already struggling to recover from Katrina, he said.

If US refineries escaped the worst feared from Rita, the hurricane has already struck a serious blow to offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico, which normally supplies nearly one-third of US crude.

A total of 859 rigs and platforms in the Gulf are unmanned after being evacuated last week before Rita swept through, US government figures showed Monday.

Crude production in the Gulf is 100 percent shut down as a result, while more than 78 percent of natural gas output is offline, the figures showed.

Even in good times, US refineries struggle to meet roaring demand in the world's biggest oil-consuming nation.

But if they are starved of supplies, the effects ripple throughout the economy for a host of products including petrol, diesel, heating oil and petrochemical offshoots such as plastics.

After Katrina, average US petrol prices soared over three dollars a gallon (3.78 litres). In advance of Rita, prices topped four dollars a gallon, before calming a touch.

The situation was deemed alarming enough for President George W. Bush on Monday to urge Americans to cut back on driving as he laid out steps to fix supply problems in the wake of the twin hurricanes.

In a speech at the US Department of Energy, Bush said he was monitoring efforts to get pipelines and refineries back up to full capacity and that he was willing again to tap the government's emergency crude reserves.

"It's important for our people to know that we understand the situation and that we're willing to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate any shortfalls in crude oil that could affect our consumers," he said.

The US government released a total of more than 23 million barrels from the reserve after Katrina battered the US Gulf Coast.

But Oppenheimer oil analyst Fadel Gheit said the problem "is not in crude oil" supplies but in refining capacity.

"The more President Bush talks about releasing strategic reserves, the more we understand that we've got no more production to give," he said.

Owing to tougher environmental regulations and local opposition, the United States has seen no new refinery built since 1976.

Bush said the United States needs to build more refineries, and reiterated his call for the construction of new nuclear power plants -- a sensitive topic since before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

"I am for increasing supply, because I understand the more supply there is of a product, that will take pressure off of (the) price," the president said.

The hurricanes have hit not just refinery capacity but also the pipelines that take the crude products from the Gulf Coast to the rest of the United States.

Two of the three pipelines that lay in Rita's path are operating at just over half their normal capacity. Bush said they should be back up fully by next week.

But as PFC's Kleinman recalled, after Hurricane Ivan in 2004, affected pipelines took a year to resume full capacity. Related Links
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