Europe will need to send some of its strategic emergency stockpiles of petrol to the US if refinery damage caused by Hurricane Katrina proves severe, the International Energy Agency, which co-ordinates the emergency inventories of the world's biggest oil consuming countries, said on Monday.

For now, the US, Europe and Japan have enough strategic emergency stockpiles of crude oil to wait a week to assess the damage before having to decide whether to release oil to damp prices, Claude Mandil, executive director of the IEA, told the Financial Times.