The warning came as Gale A. Norton, the United States interior secretary, said that oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was just beginning to recover and that major repairs could take months to complete. More than a week after Rita hit the northern coast of Texas, the vast majority of the gulf's offshore energy production remained shut as of Tuesday morning, according to the government.
"We're beginning to see some incremental progress in the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production," Ms. Norton said at a news conference in Washington.
Of the gulf's 4,000 platforms, the storms destroyed 109 offshore drilling platforms, including a major platform, and severely damaged 31, 4 of them major ones, Ms. Norton said. About 91 percent of oil production and 72 percent of natural gas production was out of service, and workers have yet to return to 42 percent of the gulf's manned platforms and 13 percent of rigs, according to the Minerals Management Service.
The recovery has been slower after Rita than after Katrina, and after Hurricane Ivan last year, because there was greater damage to ports, natural gas processing plants and other operations that support gulf production, Ms. Norton said.
BP said its oil production dropped by 145,000 barrels a day because of storm damage during the third quarter, a jump from estimates of less than 100,000 barrels a day.
Still, crude oil for November delivery fell $1.57 Tuesday, to $63.90 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Natural gas prices rose 20.7 cents, to $14.224 per thousand cubic feet. And gasoline futures dropped 4.65 cents, to $2.0157 a gallon.
"The issue is not the supply of crude oil," said Daniel Barcelo, an analyst at Banc of America Securities, who noted that between imports and government reserves there was no shortage of crude oil. "Where there is an issue is natural gas in the U.S."
Gasoline, diesel and other fuel prices also remain high because fuel is still in short supply across much of the country. The hurricanes forced energy companies to shut down more than a quarter of the United States' refining capacity, and about 17.8 percent of that was still out of service on Tuesday, according to the Energy Department.
Retail gasoline and diesel prices are up more than a $1 a gallon from October 2004. Nationally, regular unleaded gasoline averaged $2.941 a gallon and diesel prices hit $3.152 a gallon yesterday, according to AAA, the auto club.
There were signs Tuesday that another oil producer, Royal Dutch Shell, experienced worse-than-expected damage in the Gulf of Mexico. The giant offshore Mars oil platform, which is run by Shell, may not be operational until the second half of 2006, the pipeline company Enbridge told investors during a presentation.
Shell said last month that the platform, which has a capacity of 250,000 barrels a day, would be operating by the end of this year. A Shell spokeswoman, Bernadette Cunnane, said that recovery teams were continuing their work on Shell's four platforms in the area, and that she could not provide any update to the company's earlier guidance.
More cuts in reported production are likely as oil companies report third-quarter earnings, analysts and investors say. "The damage from Hurricane Rita has been significantly underreported," said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Company. Oil companies have been trying to play down the storm's impact, because they do not want prices to rise any higher than their already unpopular levels, Mr. Gheit said.
BP executives, not surprisingly, disagreed with that theory. "That's a little unfair," a BP spokesman, Toby Odone, said. BP disclosed its storm costs Tuesday, he said, to keep the public up to date. "This is the first opportunity to speak about our particular situation, and we have tried to be as open and honest as possible," he said.
Even with lost profits from storm damage and shutdowns, oil companies stand to make record earnings this year. Some politicians in Washington have proposed legislation to impose a windfall tax on oil companies' profits, increasing taxes by 50 percent when oil prices rise above $40 a barrel.
BP is expected to report $23.6 billion in net income this year, Goldman Sachs estimated Tuesday. Those earnings would be down $1.7 billion from Goldman's original estimate, after adjusting for the impact of storm damage.
BP shares fell 2.7 percent, to close at 655.5 pence a share ($11.53) in London on Tuesday, the company's biggest one-day drop since December 2004.
While they cut estimates, analysts emphasized a positive outlook for BP. "It is important to put our revised estimates in context," a Goldman analyst, Matthew Lanstone, wrote in a report. "The macroenvironment is better than it has ever been." Even reduced estimates imply earnings growth of more than 50 percent for the year, he said.
BP attributed the expected decline of $700 million in third-quarter profits to lost oil and gas production in the area, reduced refinery production in Texas City, Tex., and reduced margins from gasoline sales, because of high wholesale prices. Year-end production will be reduced by 130,000 barrels a day, down from earlier estimates of 4.1 million to 4.2 million barrels a day.