Oil futures were little higher in reaction to news of a new US tropical storm, Emily, developing ahead of tomorrow's US inventory report, the results which are expected to be skewed after hurricane Dennis caused production shutdowns. At 10.45 am, August-dated Brent futures contracts were up 98 cents at 57.53 usd. Meanwhile, US benchmark August-dated contracts were up 9 cents at 59.05. "Concerns about this new tropical storm are nagging the market, hurricane Dennis started as a similar strength tropical storm and then developed to a strong hurricane before fizzling out," said Informa Global Markets analyst Peter Luxton. The National Hurricane Centre in Miami said tropical storm Emily, the fifth named storm in what has been an early start to the Atlantic hurricane season, has developed late on Monday. However, it was still far out in the ocean and several days away from posing a threat to any inhabited areas, the centre added. Production has already been reduced due to Dennis and there are jitters that the next storm could cause damage like hurricane Ivan last year which were caused last years record high oil prices and reduced US production for several months. The US Minerals Management Service yesterday reported a cumulative loss of 4 mln barrels in US domestic oil production, as well as a loss of 18 bln cubic feet of natural gas production. Hurricane Dennis appears to have skirted the primary refinery regions in Texas and Louisiana enabling practically all of Gulf coast oil operations to resume activities. "The loss to production at US oil rigs, the closure of refineries ahead of Dennis as the oil tankers which had to hold off bringing imports, will all skew this Wednesday's data," Luxon noted. Jim Ritterbusch of Ritterbusch and Associates predicts tomorrow's data will show a fall of 3 mln distillate stock build and an equivalent sized decline in crude supplies, and a fall of 1-1.5 mln barrels in gasoline stocks. Also weighing on sentiment is little news of action by OPEC in a climate of continual record busting oil prices. "OPEC have remained very quiet, last night Saudi Arabia said it will maintain its shipments to the US, there was no news of raising production" Luxton noted. The lack of soothing from OPEC is raising questions over the group's ability to produce oil at higher levels, as spare capacity levels fall of as demand remains high, adding to the jitters of a supply squeeze in the fourth quarter.