The Bush administration has agreed to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve(SPR) to help refineries whose operations have been badly hit by Hurricane Katrina, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman announced Wednesday.

It was too early to tell how much oil would be released, Bodman told a news conference. The secretary said that he had approved a company's request for loan from the SPR and was working on other applications.

It was reported that some nine refineries hurt by Hurricane Katrina are interested in borrowing crude oil from the emergency stockpile.

According to a spokesman for the Energy Department, flow of oil from the SPR to one unidentified refiner on the US Gulf Coast could begin as early as Thursday.

Bodman said that tapping the SPR would "certainly help those companies and those refineries to function, whereas they wouldn't be functioning without a supply of crude oil."

The government is giving refineries a temporary supply of crude oil to take the place of interrupted shipments from tankers or offshore oil platforms affected by the storm. The refineries are required to replace the borrowed crude oil at a later time.

According to reports reaching here, Hurricane Katrina has shut nine Gulf Coast refineries with combined capacity of nearly 2 million barrels per day. Four others were running at reduced rates and two major Gulf Coast pipelines that ship gasoline to northern markets were closed.

The US SPR was established in December 1975, following the Arab oil embargo. The reserve currently holds oil of 700.5 million barrels. The Bush administration has stressed repeatedly that the SPR can only be used at a time when US oil supply was severely disrupted.

Following Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, the administration released more than 5 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR to a number of refineries to ensure smooth supplies.

At the same time, the administration also announced Wednesday it would relax certain air pollution standards for gasoline and diesel in all 50 states through Sept. 15 to make more supplies available.

Source: Xinhua