New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November rose 60 cents to close at 66.80 dollars per barrel.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery advanced 53 cents to 64.73 dollars per barrel at the close.

"It is way too premature to speculate about how much damage (there) could be but clearly there is potential for new highs," CALYON analyst Mike Wittner said.

Rita strengthened to a category five hurricane on Wednesday -- the strongest on the scale -- as it roared towards the Gulf of Mexico oil-producing zone, forcing the United States to brace for its second mega-storm in less than four weeks.

"There's four million barrels per day of refining capacity on the Texas Gulf Coast," Wittner added. "The two big centers are in Houston and Corpus Christi and now the storm is pointing right in between these two cities."

However, prices moved off their highs from the day late in the session after data on US inventories of crude oil and refined products that was mixed.

"Obviously this morning the market was focused on Rita and the potential of it strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico ... Lots of panic buying early in the morning," said Alaron Trading analyst Phil Flynn.

But the Energy Department report "showed gasoline rose and crude held in, we didn't see a dramatic drop in supplies, that eased concerns ... Now of course we're going back to storm watch."

British energy giant BP said on Wednesday that it was evacuating staff from its Gulf facilities after a similar move by Royal Dutch Shell.

The latest weekly snapshot of US crude inventories data from the Department of Energy (DoE), meanwhile, had a limited effect on the market.

Crude inventories dropped for the week that ended September 16 by 300,000 barrels. Traders had been expecting an increase of about one million barrels as oil production recovered from Katrina.

Gasoline supplies rose by 3.4 million barrels, the DoE added. Distillates -- used for heating oil and diesel fuel -- increased 800,000 barrels.

Societe Generale analyst Deborah White said: "The market sold off a bit when we saw the numbers which are quite bearish.

"The numbers are not as central to the market as they would normally be because most of our attention is fixed on Hurricane Rita."

Meanwhile, the government said more than 70 percent of US oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down because of the threat of Hurricane Rita.

More than 57 percent of manned offshore plaforms and 51 percent of rigs in the area were evacuated.

Separately, the US Energy Information Administration said Rita poses a risk to an area with nearly one-fourth of US refining capacity as well as a large number of offshore and onshore oil production centers.

"If Hurricane Rita remains strong, and follows a more northerly path towards the western portion of the Gulf of Mexico ... the impact could be significant as new areas of offshore as well as onshore petroleum infrastructure would be impacted," the agency said.

"With Hurricane Rita headed towards possible landfall in Texas, several major refining centers may also be at risk. Of Texas 26 refineries, 18 are located near the Gulf of Mexico. The combined crude oil distillation capacity of these refineries totals 4.0 million barrels per day, about 23 percent of the nation's crude oil refining capacity. While not all of this capacity would be affected under any scenario, it does point out how much refining capacity is at risk."

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