Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil and gasoline rose for a second day as Hurricane Rita headed toward the Texas coast, threatening refineries that were spared by Katrina last month.

BP Plc and Valero Energy Corp. are evacuating workers and slowing output at three Houston area refineries as Rita, a Category 5 storm, is forecast to hit the Texas coast on Sept. 24. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the biggest U.S. oil import terminal, stopped unloading tankers as the hurricane moved through the Gulf of Mexico, a port official said.

``The Houston area is ground zero of the refining industry,'' said Rick Mueller, an analyst with Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Tilburg, the Netherlands. ``If it suffers the scope of damage caused to refineries in Louisiana by Katrina, we could see rationing and queues at the gas pump.''

Crude oil for November delivery rose as much as 80 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $67.60 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded at $67.53 at 9:13 a.m. Sydney time. Yesterday, oil rose to $66.80, after earlier touching $68.27, the highest since Sept. 2. Oil has declined 4.7 percent since touching a record $70.85 on Aug. 30. Prices are 40 percent higher than a year ago.

Gasoline for October delivery rose as much as 5.24 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $2.1055 a gallon in after-hours trading. It was at $2.1030 at 9:07 a.m. Sydney time. Yesterday, the contract surged 3.9 percent to $2.0531, the highest close since Sept. 6. The futures reached $2.92 on Aug. 31, the highest since trading began in 1984. Futures are 57 percent higher than a year ago.

Texas is home to the biggest concentration of U.S. refineries, accounting for 26 percent of the nation's total capacity. Four refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi, representing 5 percent of U.S. capacity, remain shut because of Katrina.

Capacity at Risk

``Between 15 and 20 percent of the nation's refining capacity is at risk from this hurricane,'' said Bill O'Grady, assistant director of market analysis at A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. ``A Category 3 or above storm is going to down power lines and refiners will lose power. It will take at least 1 1/2 to 2 weeks before they come back.''

If there is flooding the situation would be much worse, O'Grady said.

ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Valero are slowing or shutting refineries as Rita moves toward the Texas coast. Shell yesterday began shutting down its Deer Park, Texas, refinery, the seventh-largest in the U.S., the company said in a statement.

Essential

ConocoPhillips is shutting its Old Ocean, Texas, refinery, about 50 miles southwest of Houston. BP is pulling some workers from its Texas City refinery and shutting parts of the plant, the nation's fourth largest, spokesman Neil Geary said yesterday.

Valero, the largest U.S. refinery, said it is pulling non- essential personnel from plants in Texas City and Houston and cutting production. The two facilities can process a total of 378,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for the Texas coastline, including Galveston, because of Rita. Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown, Texas, oil refinery, the nation's largest, is located along the Houston Ship Channel inland from Galveston. A spokesman said the company was releasing non-essential personnel from the facility.

``Rita is developing into our worst-case scenario,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. ``This is headed right into our other major refining center just after all the damage done to facilities in Louisiana. From an energy perspective it doesn't get any worse.''

BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips have evacuated staff from platforms in the Gulf, a region that's responsible for 30 percent of U.S. oil output.

Gained Force

Katrina and Rita have shut 1.1 million barrels, or 73 percent, of daily crude-oil output in the region, according to a report yesterday from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which manages offshore resources. That was almost 15 percentage points more than the previous day.

Rita today gained force over the Gulf, matching the strength of Katrina when it made landfall. Katrina shut 95 percent of offshore production in the region, closed eight refineries and slowed operations at about 10 others.

Rita was upgraded to a Category 5 storm, the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, after trading ended yesterday. The storm, packing winds of 165 mph, was moving west at about 13 mph and hurricane-force winds extended 70 miles from the center, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said at 4 p.m. local time. Storms must have winds in excess of 155 mph to be considered Category 5.

Spinning Bottle

``Hurricane paths are like spinning the bottle, you don't know where they're going to hit until about three hours from landfall,'' said Matthew Simmons, chief executive of Simmons & Co., a private investment bank in Houston for the oil and gas industry. ``Anything south of Corpus Christi and we're fine. It could be Pearl Harbor.''

Natural gas for October delivery rose as much as 2.8 percent in electronic trading to $12.948 per million British thermal units. It was at $12.88 at 9:10 a.m. Sydney time. Yesterday, the contract rose 0.8 percent to $12.594. Prices have more than doubled in the past year.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps about 40 percent of the world's oil, agreed at its meeting in Vienna two days ago to effectively suspend its quota system for the first time since the 1990 Gulf War. OPEC estimates its members can pump another 2 million barrels a day. The offer of additional barrels starts Oct. 1 and lasts three months.

Consuming nations have a responsibility to invest in refineries and to lower taxes if they want lower fuel prices, OPEC President Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah, who is also Kuwait's oil minister, said. Taxes make up 62 percent of fuel prices in the U.K. and 24 percent in the U.S., according to OPEC.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 21, 2005 19:19 EDT