Get ready for $2.50 gasoline

U.S. refiners falling short

"With all the growth in the American economy in the past decade, with the growth in the American population, we have not been able to build a new refinery in 30 years, and it's increasingly difficult to add new capacity to existing refineries," said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association

We don't currently have enough capacity to meet demand in the summer. We've been getting around that by building inventories in the spring and using them up over the summer. Now even that is getting more diffucult. Also

The refiners' low-sulfur projects will wrap up in 2006, but significant capacity expansion may be three to four years beyond that.