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

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

We got a bigger-than-expected decline because offshore production is still down by more than 50 percent and imports were down. The shock of Katrina is still being felt.

The short-term trend is down. The market finds it hard to muster any upside momentum. When it became clear we weren't going to get above $60 the mass selling started again.

Under normal circumstances a move of 70 cents in either direction would be a big deal, but that's no longer the case. There's a lot of support in the $72.60 to $72.75 area and until we break through you won't see a significant pullback.

I hate to use the word crisis, but there is certainly potential for real supply tightness,