Crude oil prices fell Wednesday after the United States said it would release oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help refineries short of crude after Hurricane Katrina.

Light sweet crude for October delivery dropped 87 cents in New York to 68.94 dollars per barrel, after it had climbed as high as 70.65 dollars a barrel in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

US Energy Secretary Samuel W.Bodman announced this morning that the government would release oil from the government reserves to help Gulf Coast refiners disrupted by a loss of shipments due to Hurricane Katrina.

Some 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's oil output was out of service, according to the US Minerals Management Service. Nearly 5 million barrels of production have been lost since Friday because of the powerful storm and the shutdown of eight refineries.

The oil reserves consist of some 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, which were last tapped in September-October 2004 during disruptions caused by Hurricane Ivan.

Source: Xinhua