DAMAGE to oil platforms and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Hurricane Katrina could be three times as bad as when Hurricane Ivan struck the area last year, warned international energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Eugene Kim, senior energy analyst at WoodMac's Houston office said efforts to inspect damage to offshore installations and subsea pipelines will be severely hampered by the mass destruction of onshore communication, power networks and lack of crew willing to leave their families to go offshore.

WoodMac is finalising a report on the impact of oil and gas supply interruptions on commodity prices and Kim said preliminary estimates are that crude oil prices will be "upper dollars-60" per barrel in the near-term and crude gas prices will jump from around dollars-10 currently to dollars-12-dollars-14 by winter.

Energy prices, which surged in advance of Hurricane Katrina, eased last Friday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said it would release emergency gasoline stocks from European refiners. The IEA said members will release two million barrels per day for 30 days and the US will release 30 million barrels of crude oil from the US government's emergency stockpile.

The US market has lost about 42 million gallons of gasoline production daily, equal to 10-per cent of the nation's normal consumption, according to government estimates.

Kim said: "We expect a definite negative impact on prices, not only from Hurricane Katrina, but because we're heading into high winter demand for heating oil with tight supplies."

The American Petroleum Institute estimates that about 58 oil and gas platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have been damaged, including Shell's Mars deepwater platform.

"Mars is a much larger producer than the fields which were damaged by Hurricane Ivan, " Kim said. He warned that damage estimates so far are based on purely visual assessments and the true extent of damage may be far greater. "Only when you reman the platforms and push the start button will you know the damage level. It's early estimates, but the numbers look quite staggering . . . these are three times greater than with Hurricane Ivan."

Aberdeen-based Wood Group, which has a significant presence in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana, is still assessing Katrina's impact.

A spokeswoman said offshore personnel had been evacuated prior to the storm and efforts to account for all employees were continuing. "The safety of personnel and their families is our highest priority, " she said, adding that some of the facilities had been affected by loss of power and flooding.

Stagecoach has sent a group of 12 coaches and 24 drivers from its Coach USA division to help evacuate some of the thousands of people who have been made homeless by the disaster. Coach USA staff have donated bottled water, food items and toiletries, which are being loaded on to the vehicles.