OK, remember you saw it here first. “Unplanned refinery outages. Almost sounds like the California electric supply a few years ago.” I’ve since heard this on the radio news. (Cannot remember where, I’ve been cross country this week.) Gas prices are now officially over $3/gallon for regular. In the Pacific Northwest, prices were over $3.20/gallon for the same grade. And this coming just about one month after the US Energy Information Agency said that we’ll be seeing lower gas prices this summer.

Lower than what?

With continued “unplanned refinery outages” (oh they learn so fast) just as we’re moving into storm season (seems the tornados are starting out pretty strong this year), I cannot even begin to predict. If we actually get a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, I predict we’ll see $4/gallon this summer.

But it really does not matter. This summer, next summer. We’ll see $4/gallon for regular gas by the end of 2008. The sooner the better, as discussed in my last post, for keeping prices lower longer. Of course, I’m not convinced that lower prices are a good goal. higher prices not only encourage conservation (read as “reduce global warming emissions) but also make alternative fuels more profitable. And nothing drives investment and invention like profit.

So do we attempt to take the lead and seize the moment? Tax gas up to $4/gallon now, and collect the revenues while we wait for the actual price to go up? We could phase it in over the next 3 months. But if a hurricane hits in the Gulf, we might be more than a bit behind the actual price rise.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Climate Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.