WE FACE A FRENCH STYLE DEATH TOLL THIS WINTER

We are in serious trouble with gasoline supplies and the WSJ (sub required) did a very good job reporting it yesterday. We are simply using far too much and don't have the refining capacity to make enough. It looks like high retail prices are here; in both northern and southern California unleaded is well over $2 and still close to $2.60 in Phoenix. One stat for you, back in the mid 80's refineries operated at less than 80% of capacity; this gave them time to repair them, use reformulated gasoline, change things and so on. Now, discounting the seven refineries shut down for a week due to the blackout, they are operating at 91%, which has been the case for several years. That means they have no flexibility at all; every time one or two shut down for maintenance a shortage is created. We may be looking at the new high prices for a long time. The storage and supply data is not in the market because "traders", as opposed to hedgers, just threw up their hands and went on vacation, because there was a huge difference between the Department of Energy figures and the API numbers. I don't want to sound like an SUV bashing Left Wing Terrorist but I think consumer fuel consumption has to be curbed. We may even find ourselves in WWII rationing by 2008 if we don't. Time to put away politics and look at reality, part of which is building more refineries, something the envornuts have stopped for twenty years. We are now paying for this environmentalism too. And natural gas supplies are in even worse shape due exclusively to the environmental lobby halting the drilling for natural gas. All who laughed at the French body count from the heat this summer may see the same here this winter because people freeze to death in our big cities. This is a major disaster waiting to happen; a disaster that is only covered from this phony environmentalist angle by our media. Alan Greenspan warned about "exuberance" in the stock market and look what happened; he has warned "that we are headed into a dire situation" regarding natural gas. Wake up.