[Smokin' Joe]

Don't worry, the whiners, and the tinfoil hat eeevil conspiracy, "give us free gas" conservatives will be here shortly. {sigh}

[Sthitch]

I think that people will be shocked by how quickly those refineries are going to be back up and running. Every minute they are shut down costs their owners millions of dollars. Free enterprise will take care of this.

[Brilliant]

Just proves the foolhardiness of running insufficient refinery capacity, and of relegating the refineries to just a handful of places.

[kellynla]

While there hasn't been a new refinery built in America since 1976...

Look for motorcycle sales to jump through the roof!

[Wiseghy]

Maybe the country will reconsider building more refineries??

Naahhhhh....

[mlc9852]

That's what we need - hearings!

[SierraWasp]

"Storm may shut refineries for months"

Well that's nuthin... EnvironMentalists have shut building any new capacity for 360 months!!!

[Apercu]

Keep the EPA multiple gas blend suspension in force, suspend the federal & state gas taxes indefinitely, start importing from IRAQ, drill - drill - drill where the caribou roam & wherever else it is geologically promising, start building refineries & identical nuke plants (one thing the French have done right), start using our vast coal supply by building liquification/gasification plants.
It won't happen overnight but market forces will force oil back down to the $20-30 range.

[Saltmeat]

you can hug nearest evironmentalist for the lack of refining capacity that we now face. No new grassroots refinery has been built in the US since the Gulf Oil Refinery at Alliance (New Orleans), Louisiana went into operation in 1976. The same mentality prevails regarding new refineries as does drilling off the coasts of Florida and California. Not in my backyard. In a community of intelligent human beings, we should be able to absorb the loss of ten percent of the refining capacity. However, we are a confederacy of dunces. We should not have had so many eggs in one geographical basket. Perhaps the Houston area will be next. That is where the remainder of the capacity is. We still have two more months of hurricane season.