The commission is very conscious of the swift and severe price spikes that occurred immediately before and after Katrina made landfall.

Consumers shouldn't infer that there is something particularly suspect going on if they see price variations. . . . If you saw the same price at every station it might indicate competition is working perfectly, but it isn't inconsistent with competition that there's a variety of prices.

These price spikes are causing severe hardships for the millions of Americans who depend upon affordable and adequate supplies of gasoline for many of life's necessities,

They're so price conscious in their business workings.

The inventories have built a little bit, but that doesn't mean an outage somewhere doesn't cause price spikes.

If we had a wide-scale and prolonged freeze, we could have big stock draws and price spikes. There isn't any shortage of crude in the market, the problem is getting it refined into heating oil and gasoline.