Oil prices fell yesterday as petrol futures plummeted on signs of slowing demand growth and expectations that refiners would delay autumn maintenance to make up for supplies shut by Hurricane Katrina.

Slowing global oil demand may help offset the storm's devastating blow to America's energy hub and help the International Energy Agency (IEA) to fend off a petrol shortage, the West's energy watchdog said.

US light crude was down 39 cents at $64.10 (€51.67) a barrel yesterday. Prices are down from a record $70.85 last week. London Brent crude fell 14 cents to $62.94.

Valero Energy, the largest US refiner, said it will delay any maintenance plans that it can at its plants to keep fuel production high in the wake of Katrina.

The US Department of Energy said refiners have volunteered to delay work on their plants that occurs in the autumn as petrol demand wanes.

Limiting losses on crude was the slow pace of the US oil industry's recovery after the storm heightened fears that tight supplies might last months.

Shell said only 60 per cent of its normal 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude output in the US gulf coast is expected to be back by the end of the year. Katrina damaged Shell's Mars platform, which produces about a third of its gulf crude, and was one of the areas expected to be down in 2005.

About 5 per cent of US oil refining capacity may remain offline for several months after the storm shut down 10 per cent of refining capacity, the US Department of Energy said.

"The loss in petrol output from these plants is expected to be 600,000 barrels a day," said Barclays Capital in a report. New data from the US Minerals' Management Service dashed hopes of a swift recovery in production, revealing about 900,000 bpd, or 60 per cent, of US crude output from the Gulf of Mexico was still shut.

Experts forecast that Katrinawould cut US GDP growth by 0.5 to 1.0 percentage points.