There is still plenty of crude oil in storage for refineries to use even if a large chunk of U.S. oil production in the Gulf of Mexico remains offline due to Hurricane Rita, a senior government energy analyst said on Monday.
Doug MacIntyre, senior analyst with the Energy Information Administration, said U.S. commercial crude oil inventories were in the upper end of the average range for this time of year before Rita hit, and the government has crude it can loan refineries from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
