Is Ike Going to Drive Gas Over $4 Again?

It seems like every time we think we’re going to get a break in this down economy and a break from the ever increasingly ridiculous gas prices that seem to be pinching every American’s wallet, we are hit with yet another natural disaster or some other factor that is said to again increase the gas prices, or take us out of the running from a much needed reprieve from the high prices.

Well, it seems that Hurricane Ike, which is as I write this (on Spetember 14th), hitting Texas very hard, may again drive up our gas prices at the pump, forcing Americans to again resort to car pooling, cutting back on holiday driving, and also cutting back on all the other fun stuff they can use their disposable income for.

I know for our household, we have taken to only shopping at a grocery store that offers money off gas the more you spend there, that’s one of the ways we deal with the gas prices and others have other ways of cutting back to make room to pay for gas. No doubt many of the best gas credit cards have gained in popularity too since the gas squeeze started, since they give you points toward gas purchases too.

Yep, you guess it, all that stuff that adds to the faltering economy will happen again (as if it has stopped, no I know it hasn’t, I’m just saying it will again become a real concern, not something we think is going away any time soon). Ike may be hitting key oil refineries as well as making gas transport harder in many stricken areas, and that drives those that speculate on gas prices for a profit to speculate the prices higher, which means that we will pay the higher price tag for gas again at the profit of rich people who speculate, in a nutshell.

I had received a petition to sign that was sent to key congressmen for my state of Ohio a few months ago which called for legislative action on oil speculation, which many say is one of the main reasons we pay such high gas prices when stuff like this happens, and signed it. I did get a response (I’m sure canned since they’ve no doubt gotten millions of letters at this point), that they were seriously looking at this for potential action, but we’ll see if anything actually happens from it.