(Adds pipeline problems causing delay in oil shipments in paragraphs 9-11)
By Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Tuesday said a little more oil will be available to the market during February because of lower shipments to the nation's emergency crude stockpile, but deliveries to the reserve in March will be more than double prior estimates.
The extra barrels this month are needed as U.S. petroleum inventories are low and energy prices are high, but keeping more oil off the market in March won't help refiners trying to build their spring gasoline supplies.
Oil shipments to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will total 5.949 million barrels (205,100 barrels per day) this month, down slightly from the 6.536 million barrels (225,400 bpd) previously scheduled.
The reserve, which was created by Congress in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo, currently holds 643 million barrels of crude in underground salt caverns at four sites in Texas and Louisiana.
The Bush administration will fill the reserve to 700 million barrels by the end of next year.
While the reserve's shipments will be less than initially scheduled in February, more crude will be taken off the market in March as deliveries to the stockpile are forecast sharply higher to 4.964 million barrels (160,200 bpd) from 2.445 million barrels (78,900 bpd).
For April, oil shipments have been revised down to 6.375 million barrels (212,500 bpd) from 7.056 million barrels (235,200 bpd).
The new shipment schedule is not due to deferrals in deliveries suggested by the government.
Instead a pipeline problem near the reserve's West Hackberry, Louisiana, site is forcing oil firms to deliver their crude by ship, pushing deliveries scheduled for January and February into March, a department official said.
Because a ship carries large amounts of oil, companies also moved up some their April deliveries into March, the official said.
The new delivery scheduled was posted Tuesday on the Energy Department's Office of Fossil Energy Web site www.fe.doe.gov.
The agency also for the first time broke down the delivery schedule for the roughly 19 million barrels of oil it announced last week will be added to the reserve over a six-month period beginning in May.
The shipments will be 4.679 million barrels (151,000 bpd) in May, 3.482 million (116,100 bpd) in June, 1.785 million (57,600 bpd) in July, 4.102 million (132,400 bpd) in August, 1.482 million (49,400 bpd) in September and 3.569 million (115,200 bpd) in October.
Two senators asked the Bush administration on Friday to suspend shipments of oil to the emergency stockpile to increase available supplies and lower energy prices.
In a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the senators, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, said there should be no more shipments to the reserve "until oil prices stabilize at lower levels and inventories of crude oil in the private sector increase."
"Temporarily suspending deposits of oil into the SPR will help American consumers and businesses with urgently needed relief from near-record high crude oil and energy prices," the lawmakers said.
Their plea followed OPEC's decision last week to slash its oil production levels by 1 million barrels a day beginning on April 1, a move that will make oil supplies even tighter.
However, the administration has said the amount of oil going into the reserve would have little effect on the roughly 20 million barrels of crude consumed in the U.S. market each day, and it would be better to build the stockpile in case of a major supply disruption.
The Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's analytical arm, has found the impact is "close to zero," said Joe Davis, a department spokesman.