Oil Struggles, Gasoline Surges

"If you have a shirt that is already tight, and it shrinks in the wash, it's not going to fit, period," Gheit said.

Steve Baker, a spokesman for the Colonial Pipeline Co., said diesel generators are being trucked to the region and should have that line running by the weekend. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Steve Johnson announced that antipollution standards for gasoline will be eased throughout the country until Sept. 15 to help move gasoline supplies to regions experiencing shortages. The move could also ease the import of refined gasoline from countries with lower environmental standards, said John Felmy, an economist at the American Petroleum Institute.

But the refineries could face a longer recovery. Thousands of workers who were evacuated must return to their posts, but many of them have no homes to return to. And as long as the region has no electricity, refineries cannot reach full capacity.

Potential shipments of operational refineries up the Mississippi River have been halted by river lanes that are hopelessly clogged. Daniel R. Robinson, president of Placid Refining Co., which has a refinery outside Baton Rouge, said the distribution system for oil and gasoline is in a "complete state of chaos."

Robinson's company has secured a pledge that the Energy Department will lend Placid about 1 million barrels of crude from the strategic reserve. But, he said, it could take seven to 10 days for the oil to be delivered. That is about his refinery's reserve supply. Any delay and it too will shut down.

Energy Department officials said yesterday that they are in serious negotiations with two other refiners and that as many as five more requests for oil are being entertained.

But no one would venture to say how quickly crude oil production from rigs in the storm-battered gulf would be back up to speed. BP PLC said Hurricane Katrina has toppled seven of its oil platforms in the area. Two other platforms were listing.

Oil production in the gulf did improve slightly yesterday. The Interior Department announced production was down 91 percent, after being down 95 percent on Tuesday. But 561 oil platforms and drilling rigs remain evacuated, curtailing production by 1.37 million barrels of oil a day. Natural gas production is also down 83 percent.

The pledged release from the reserve came during a bipartisan clamor for action. Some Democrats, such as Rep. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), have been haranguing Bush for months for such a release from the reserve, and they were joined this week by a handful of Republicans. But the White House has been reluctant to interfere with the free market for oil.

That reluctance will dampen the impact of the intervention, said Amy Jaffe, an energy research specialist at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Oil traders in the 1990s knew the Clinton White House would intervene to hold down oil prices, so they would begin selling oil during price spikes. Bush's disinclination has emboldened speculators to bid up oil prices, she said, and they are not likely to sell now because they do not believe the White House will make sure prices fall sharply.

"With Bush, speculators don't see a limit," she said.