based MPC Commodity Fund. "People are very much using lower refinery utilisation rates and higher imports to support the argument that demand is lower. And that's incorrect. I don't think refinery utilisation is an accurate measure of demand." U.S. refiners worked at only about 70 percent of capacity last week, the lowest since the government started keeping weekly records in 1990, causing fuel stocks to fall sharply. With 10 U.S. refineries still shut after hurricanes and Gulf of Mexico gas output way down, few U.S. consumers can look forward to the winter with confidence. By Thursday, 14 percent of U.S. capacity remained closed due to Katrina and Rita, along with 80 percent of offshore Gulf of Mexico production. Strikers in France have closed the country's biggest refinery and blockaded a key Mediterranean oil port, threatening the shipment of fuel across the Atlantic. Oil traders say prices have also been put under pressure by the West's apparent readiness to use government-held strategic inventories to offset lost crude and fuel supplies. The head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said a price trigger that would allow the government to tap into heating oil stores could also be met next week. The Japanese government said on Friday it would extend a cut in its minimum requirement for private oil stocks until early November, giving refiners more time to draw down inventories.
