Katrina's Economic Impact.

As far as the economic impact is concerned, releasing oil from the federal petroleum reserves which is supposed to give refineries a temporary supply of crude oil will not help - the problem being that the refineries themselves our out of work because of power cuts and flooding.

The government's oil ``is not going to be of much help unless we get refineries running again,'' said Adam Sieminski, global oil strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York, before the announcement. ``Releasing oil from the SPR right now would be actually inappropriate because there would be no place to put it.''

The only impact of the announcement is that it will 'calm down' the market. It is likely that the price of fuel will rise in the U.S. if there is shortage before winter.