Are We Headed towards an Energy Crisis?

The cost of gases increased over three dollars a gallon in seven states across the country.  Gasoline inventories are at a 20 year low and demand for gasoline is increasing.  People are driving farther and the Bush in a strange and has done little to deal with a little mean energy crisis.

General Motors and Ford are both hemorrhaging with losses and none of the automakers are in a position financially to come up with an automobile that would truly decrease the consumption of gasoline.  Even the Toyota previous only pays lip service to the concept of energy savings as it touts mileage ratings that it doesn't actually get and use.

Memorial Day weekend is coming up in about three to four weeks and Americans are likely to hit the road.  I'm no exception I'll probably be hitting the road the week after of war held a weekend to go visit my family after the recent birth of a baby boy.  With the crisis in the Middle East and the war and the problems that Saudi Arabia is looking at with terrorism and turmoil in Venezuela, the United States is positioned in a perilous state as we only have 21 days of fuel in our pipeline.  If we suffered as a disruption in fuel there be chaos.

Here in Georgia just a little over a year ago we experienced gas shortages is one of the major pipelines that brings gasoline to the area broke.  But what happens if a much bigger supplier of gasoline or oil for that matter were to go off-line or break in a way that it impacted the entire country as opposed to just a few states.  The government seems ill-equipped to deal with such a scenario. 

U.S. gasoline inventories are at a 20-year low. The latest statistics released from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, show gasoline inventories this week at 194 million barrels. That is just under 21 days of national use. EIA described that number as "well below the lower end of the average range." During the same week last year, inventories stood at 208 million barrels.

Gasoline demand has risen by 2.2 percent so far this year, according to the weekly data from the government.

Source: $3 Gas Spreads to 7 States, D.C.