The Mississippi river, one of the biggest arteries for US goods, was slowly reopening to shipping, at least to military vessels conducting one of the biggest relief operations in US history.

Gary LaGrange, chief executive of the Port of New Orleans, said the US Department of Transportation was providing several ships to house 1,000 essential port workers temporarily.

"In the next several weeks, almost all of the Port of New Orleans will be dedicated to military relief vessels," he said.

"In the next week to two weeks, commercial vessels will return once electrical power and manpower arrive."

Three oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast were restarting operations and another four were expected to do so soon, the Department of Energy (DoE) said.

Six refineries in the states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi remained shut. Another six were operating with oil supplied from the US government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The United States is releasing 30 million barrels of crude oil from the emergency reserve, and its industrial partners another 30 million in a coordinated move that has helped to put a cap on surging oil prices.

As global markets calm and oil supplies resume from the hurricane-hit south, motorists' organisations reported that US gasoline (petrol) prices were stabilising after a spate of panic buying last week on the back of a big spike.

Congress committees began hearings on energy policy in Katrina's wake. Senior US lawmakers said the focus should be on upgrading oil-processing capacity fully three decades after the United States built its last refinery.

Joe Barton, the Republican chairman of the energy committee in the House of Representatives, said nothing would be "stupider" than a call by Democratic Senator Carl Levin for 1970s-style price controls to be slapped on gasoline.

"If you want to see real shortages and a black market, then put price controls back on," Barton told the CNBC network.

The DoE said the Colonial pipeline network was fully back up, pumping a daily average of 95 million gallons (360 million litres) of fuel and heating oil to eastern US cities including New York and Washington.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a massive terminal for supertankers which lies in the Gulf of Mexico off New Orleans, was nearly back to full capacity but one storage facility lacked power.

Oil drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which normally supply a quarter of US crude, are also getting better, the US Minerals Management Service said Tuesday.

About 58 percent of daily oil production and 42 percent of natural gas output in the region was still offline, with 219 rigs and platforms evacuated, it said.

That is a marked improvement on the situation immediately after Katrina swept through, when Gulf production ground to a virtual halt.

Just over 970,000 customers remained without electricity in Louisiana and Mississippi, down from a peak of 2.7 million just after Katrina hit, the DoE also said.

Most of flooded New Orleans remained without power, but crews of the regional utility company Entergy have returned to the city for the first time since Katrina hit to assess the situation, it said.

The Lower Mississippi, a vital conduit for shipments of grain and other agricultural goods from the Midwest, had reopened to smaller cargo barges with a maximum draught of 35 feet (10.7 metres) during daylight hours.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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