Jeff

Good old disaster capitalism rears its ruthless heads.

“Nationwide, I believe prices will go up 20 cents a gallon (3.78 liters), at least for a month,” Lipow said. (Ed. Note: Lipow is Texas-based oil industry expert Andy Lipow)

Fears about what damages Ike could wreak were heightened by concerns about the aging refineries, some of which have been operating for more than 75 years.

The threat to the refinery industry along the Gulf coast comes as gasoline stockpiles — at 187.9 million barrels on August 5 — are below the average level for this time of year, the US Department of Energy said Wednesday.

Planalytics’ Rouiller said Ike is similar to Hurricane Alicia in 1983.

“It took them over a year to get their feet on the ground again,” he said. “The refineries were down for months. Basically, the whole infrastructure around the Houston metropolitan area was devastated.”

Gasoline supplies across the southern and eastern U.S. may be disrupted by the storm, Rouiller said.

“We could have this capability lost for a long period of time,” he said.

Gasoline shortages may occur across the southern U.S. up to Washington because of the closures caused by Hurricane Gustav and now Ike, Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability at the U.S. Department of Energy, said on a conference call.

“We expect to see constrained supplies of refined products,” he said. “The administration will utilize every tool at our disposal to lessen the likelihood of limited fuel supplies,” including tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Not that tapping the SPR will do any good, though, if the problem is refining rather than Gulf oil production.

Alternatively, the US is a net gasoline exporter, so the Feds could cancel the export contracts and cause the exporters massive losses but mitigate some of the other effects like rationing and price hikes.

Really, though, these are logical guesses on my part – I’m not an expert on gasoline and oil supply and demand.