19% of oil refinery capacity in the Gulf of Mexico was shutdown by hurricane Ike

An analysis from the peal oil site the Oil drum is that the oil refineries will be out for about 2 weeks.

The analysis is that it would take an outage of 3 weeks or more for gasoline prices to go back over $4 nationwide.

The hit to production triggered a spike in U.S. average gasoline prices on Saturday of more than 5 cents to $3.73 a gallon, according to the AAA’s daily survey of more than 100,000 service stations.

A spokesman for the joint operations of southeast Texas emergency management agencies said the state’s refineries appeared to have escaped the kind of heavy flooding that left plants shut for months after the 2005 hurricanes.

Brian Wang

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

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