I have been following this so-called gas shortage and realize that once again the American public has been intentionally taken advantage of by the Bush Administration. It is clear that this gas shortage was planned in advance. They are trying to tell us this is a result of Hurricane Ike, but actually it is a well conceived plan to use the hurricane as an excuse to gouge the American public at the gas pumps. For at least a week before Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana, we were warned about the approach of Hanna and Ike right behind them. Yes, I know that hurricanes can change paths as we saw Hanna do, but even with the threat of these hurricanes coming into the gulf area, there was no planning to relieve any hardship on the oil industry that they might cause.
Instead they chose to do nothing and use this as an excuse to once again hike the gas prices by creating a false shortage. They had a minimum of two weeks to start increasing gasoline production to accomodate the huge number of people that would need to be evacuated ahead of the storms. Don't be fooled by the prospect of offshore drilling solving this problem either. It has been reported that there is no shortage of crude oil, just that the refineries located in Texas have not increased their production to meet the alleged increase in demand. Now because of the rising cost of a gallon of gas, consumption decreased over the last few months since June. People cancelled and shortened their summer vacations due to the cost of filling up the tank so I'm sure that created some surplus. But regardless of that, there is still no excuse for not increasing production ahead of the storms.
I don't know what's going on across the country, but here in the Atlanta area, gas stations started running out of gas Friday morning. That was before Ike hit land. By Saturday evening, it was impossible to find gas in certain areas, causing panic to people who were getting off from work and unable to get gas on their way home, praying they would make it. As I ventured out this Sunday morning, there are very few cars on the road and no gas stations pumping gas, only open for convenience sales. How can a city 1000 miles away from a storm be affected before the storm hits unless this was pre-planned? Can we really take another four years of this nonsense? Do we really want another Governor from an oil producing state in the White House?
