Oil prices continued retreating on hopes the US might release its emergency stockpiles, but falls were tempered by concerns about refinery shutdowns in the hurricane-battered US Gulf Coast ahead of winter. At 12.54 pm, November-dated Brent futures contracts were down 73 cents at 62.07 usd a barrel while US benchmark November-dated contracts were down 69 cents at 64.77 usd. US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said yesterday the government was "prepared to do what is necessary with strategic reserves", sending crude futures lower, but analysts expect falls will be limited. "I don't think this is the beginning of any major downward correction. Markets might be reacting to Bodman's comments, but I think if people were to think what that actually means, they wouldn't be so quick to sell," said Calyon analyst Mike Wittner. Wittner pointed out that about that 12 refineries in the US, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the country's oil-processing capacity, remain shut in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, while nearly 93 pct of crude production in the Gulf Coast region is still offline. "We think we will lose about 175 mln barrels of product output from those refineries from now through to November, and even if you offset some of those losses with higher product imports from Europe or elsewhere in the US -- its a huge loss," he said. The Paris-based International Energy Agency, which in the wake of Katrina agreed in early September to release 60 mln barrels of oil, has hinted it may continue to do so to shore up supply. In any case, Wittner believes the process will take time. "Its a slow process, they are still trying to figure out exactly how much crude has been taken up by the market and its not so simple for them," he said. He also pointed out that take-up rates may not be high. For example, when the US agreed to release 30 mln barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after Hurricane Katrina, only 11 mln barrels were taken up. "So crude supply is not a problem, it wasn't a problem then and it isn't a problem now. As far as products are concerned, the US heating oil reserve is 2 mln barrels, it's nothing," he said. While Wittner agreed a certain amount of hurricane-related disruption has already been priced into the market, he maintained that prices are unlikely to correct lower going into winter. Even so, upside potential may also be limited since prices have not risen too far despite the refinery outages in the US after Rita, the near complete disruption of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and the strikes in France. "This failure to push the market higher has been surprising and may prove that (with) pressure from the healthy stocks of crude oil, the fall in demand for gasoline and with winter yet to set in, the market has enough resistance to prevent breaking back above 66 usd a barrel," Sucden analyst Sam Tilley said. "The market looks to have reached a near term top," he said.