Maritrans Comments on Effect of Hurricane Rita and Limited Waiver of U.S. Jones Act

Maritrans Inc. (NYSE:TUG), a leading U.S. flag marine
petroleum transportation company, today issued comments on the impact
of Hurricane Rita on Maritrans' operations. The Company indicated
that, after a brief interruption at the height of the storm, all of
its vessels are operating at pre-storm utilization levels and that
there was no physical damage to its fleet or injury to the crews
aboard the vessels. In anticipation of Rita, Maritrans either
positioned its vessels in the western Gulf of Mexico or kept the
vessels in port, which reduced any potential for impact from the
hurricane. In total, the Company estimates it lost approximately 11
vessel operating days to Rita related delays. Maritrans' vessels
continue to load at originally scheduled customer locations or at
alternative ports, based on its customers' needs. For those areas that
had been previously impacted by Katrina, such as the refineries in
Louisiana and Mississippi, more than half of the customer's capacity
has returned to service at this time. For those that have not yet
returned to service, Maritrans is continuing to load at alternative
ports to meet those customers' needs.
   Similar to the response following the massive impact of Hurricane
Katrina on the petroleum refining infrastructure, yesterday the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security issued a time-limited
waiver of the Jones Act, which restricts U.S. coastwise shipping to
U.S. vessels owned and operated by U.S. companies with U.S. seafarers.
The waiver expires on October 24, 2005. The Company believes that the
effect of this limited waiver on its results will be minimal.

   ABOUT MARITRANS

   Maritrans Inc. is a U.S. based company with a 77-year commitment
to building and operating petroleum transport vessels for the U.S.
domestic trade. With 16 units, Maritrans has the largest fleet in its
size category and one of the largest serving the U.S. coastwise trade.
The fleet consists of five oil tankers and eleven oceangoing married
tug/barge units with an aggregate fleet capacity of approximately 3.9
million barrels, of which 63 percent is double-hulled. Maritrans has
two primary areas of focus: transporting refined products in the Gulf
of Mexico to growth areas such as Florida and supplying Philadelphia
area refineries with crude oil lightering from large foreign tankers.
Maritrans is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and maintains an office
in the Philadelphia area.

   SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

   The information in this news release includes certain
forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results,
levels of activity, growth, performance, and earnings per share or
achievements to be materially different from those expressed in or
implied by such forward-looking statements. These statements are based
on assumptions the Company believes are reasonable, but a variety of
factors could cause the Company's actual results, goals, targets or
objectives to differ materially from those contemplated, projected,
forecast, estimated, anticipated, planned or budgeted. Such factors
include, among others, changes in oil companies' decisions as to the
type and origination point of the crude that it processes, changes in
the amount of imported petroleum products, competition for marine
transportation, domestic oil consumption, the continuation of federal
law restricting United States point-to-point maritime shipping to U.S.
vessels (the Jones Act), the timing and success of our double-hull
rebuilding program, demand for petroleum products, future spot market
rates, demand for our services, levels of foreign imports, changes in
interest rates, the effect of war or terrorist activities and the
general financial, economic, environmental and regulatory conditions
affecting the oil and marine transportation industry in general. The
Company is under no duty to update any of these forward-looking
statements after the date of this release to conform such statements
to actual results.