drscott | Levees break, gas prices rise

In my daily meanderings about the Web, I stumble onto some interesting stuff. New Orleans is slowly flooding today, and traders are just realizing that, while oil production and price will be slightly affected worldwide, gasoline production in the US has been affected much more -- about 5% of US refining capacity will be offline for weeks to months. So the gasoline futures markets are in turmoil. $3 gas is now certain, and $4 is possibly the level where people will cut back enough to meet the temporarily decreased supply.

Here's a very informative posting, including the only map I've ever seen of the crazy quilt of regionally-mandated gasoline formulations.

[edit] Changed loss in refinery capacity to 5% based on new figures. So panic peak price of gas will probably not be more than $3.50 nationwide, since alternative supplies of refined product can be shipped in by tanker to make up for the smaller loss.