Exactly,

While I do believe there are spot shortages, (my local BP stations only have premium fuel for example) looking at the government figures, we have a stockpile of about three weeks of finished gasoline on hand.

Now, what I don't know is did we lose a bunch of that in NO and if so, how much?

We did lose 10% of our refining capacity in the storm, but the other 90% is there, along with some percentage of our stockpile of finished gasoline.

Then of course there is the stockpile of crude not counting the Strategic Petroleum reserve, good for about two weeks of supply needed for all refining needs, and add to that about 30 days supply in the Strategic Petroleum reserve.

So it would take two months of not pumping another drop of domestic oil out of the ground and not getting another drop of imported oil before the refineries would have to shut down.

Or, if all the refineries shut down today, we would be out of gas in two to three weeks.

The above is based on a quick look at the numbers here and some "in the head" math: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/5tab.html

and

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html

"Seems like our society is more interested in turning each successive generation into cookie-cutter wankers than anything else." -- Jato 8/24/2004