Congress Urged to Ease Pain of Gas Prices

Eddie Engels of Chicago finishes pumping over $83 of gas into his GMC Yukon, Tuesday, May 15, 2007, near downtown Chicago as gas prices continue to soar. Most Americans are locked in to their driving habits, and can do little to alter them when prices rise, experts say. Indeed, demand for gasoline rose over the last month, even though prices were rising toward record highs. At the same time, refineries have experienced more downtime this spring than in years past, cutting the gasoline supply. The combination of low supplies and high demand is what's sending prices up to almost $4 a gallon in some areas. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Charles Rex Arbogast - AP)

As a result, gasoline inventories fell by more than half, to 93.5 million barrels in the week ended May 4, from 205.1 million barrels in the same week in 2006 and 214.7 million barrels in 2005, according to government figures.

Charles Drevna, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners' Association, said many refineries shut down for maintenance for the first time since their operations were kicked into overdrive by Hurricane Katrina. When the 2005 storm knocked out gas and oil facilities along the Gulf Coast, refineries in other parts of the country had to step in and pick up the slack, Drevna said. In many cases, that meant putting off regular maintenance for years.

"There's still a lasting effect from that," Drevna said.

Also, he said, the process of turning crude oil into gasoline has become more complicated over the years, particularly as different governmental entities have mandated changes to the chemical makeup of gasoline for environmental reasons. It takes more equipment, more complicated processes and more oil to make gasoline now than it used to, Drevna said.

Drevna said refiners have been steadily expanding their existing facilities, adding the equivalent of one new refinery a year, on average, every year for more than a decade. That's a cheaper and faster way to expand refinery capacity than going through the multiyear process of trying to win a permit to build new plants, he said.

While higher gas prices haven't done much to cut demand, they also don't appear to have had much effect on consumers' car-buying behavior, according to Autodata Corp. Sales of lights trucks and SUVs declined 3 percent in April, less than the 12 percent slump in car sales. Light trucks and SUVs continue to make up the majority of vehicle sales in the U.S., or about 53 percent.

At a Chevron station in San Francisco that was charging $3.95 for a gallon of regular gasoline, Nathan Sullins, 31, a computer programmer, gloated as he filled up his Toyota Prius hybrid for a fraction of what other drivers were paying.

"High gas prices are a bummer, but you reap what you sow," he said. "If we had started making fuel-efficient cars 10 years ago, we wouldn't be in this situation."

William Hill, of Pittsburgh, said he'd consider downsizing from his minivan to a hybrid sedan if hybrids weren't more expensive.

"They charge you more for a hybrid to compensate for what you would pay for gas," Hill said while gassing his minivan along the Pennsylvania Turnpike one day last week. "So either way, you lose."