Duh.

But for the details, the WSJ today reported that almost 10% of the nation’s refining capacity is down after Katrina. Refineries have been running at full bore, since there is a shortage of refining capacity in the US (where a new refinery hasn’t been built in 29 years). And today, the day after the storm, future prices for crude oil went up more than yesterday — something almost unprecedented. Usually prices rise the most the day of a storm. So the market is thinking that it’s gonna be a while before things get back to normal in NOLA.

Just think, if you owned a big SUV with like a Ford Excursion with a 44 gallon tank and gas hits $4/gallon, you could end up paying $176 per fill up. Must be fun having to swipe your credit card four times to get around that $50/transaction limit. Oh, that 44 gallons get you about 440 miles down the road.

If you drove a Prius, you’d get about 2,400 miles out of a 44 gallon tank.