The natural disaster shut 95 percent of US oil and natural gas production in the Gulf, the US Minerals Management Service said.

"There's going to be a lot more damage offshore than there will be to the refineries," said Peter Beutel, president of trading consultant Cameron Hanover. "But in this age, losing even one refinery would be worse than losing a production facility."

US crude hit a record of $70.85 a barrel, before settling at $69.81 on Tuesday.

The US Department of Energy said at least nine US refineries were shut as a result of the storm, with another four reducing production rates.

A US senator who flew over southeastern Louisiana said Tuesday three of those refineries in Louisiana were "under water" due to flooding, raising the chance of a prolonged outage at those plants.

At least six companies reported rigs adrift, listing or sunk. Anchor vessels and tugboats were deployed to retrieve the facilities.

Newfield Exploration Co. said it had lost one of its production platforms in the eastern Gulf.

An oil drilling facility broke free of its mooring in Mobile Bay, Alabama, and slammed into a bridge because of high winds from the hurricane, the Alabama Department of Transportation said.

Royal Dutch Shell said an aerial inspection of its Mars platform, which produces 147,000 barrels of oil and 157 million cubic feet of gas per day, showed some damage to its upper deck. The company will send staff to five other facilities to restart power and perform more detailed damage checks.

Chevron Corp. said it planned to conduct flyovers at its production facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi. However, the company was uncertain whether it had enough fuel for its aircraft, which had to be moved to East Texas from Louisiana.

RESTARTING PRODUCTION

Kerr McGee resumed oil and natural gas production in the western US Gulf after its facilities survived the brunt of the storm, a company official said.

Two deepwater production facilities, Nansen and Boomvang, resumed operations in the western Gulf, and Red Hawk may restart later Tuesday, the company said.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said they started post-storm damage assessments of their offshore installations.

Apache Corp. said it hoped to resume operations at some platforms by the end of the day if pipelines were not damaged. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port said initial damage reports were encouraging and hoped to begin crude shipments on Thursday.

BP and Marathon Oil said its early assessments of its offshore operations showed no damage.