Bush plan will do little to ease pain at the pump

Storage tanks also need to be drained and cleaned to remove traces of MTBE. The result is that “No Gas” signs have started to pop up temporarily at a handful of retailers in the Northeast who were unable to get gasoline at any price. So far, those outages have been infrequent and short-lived.

In his speech on Tuesday, Bush called on the Environmental Protection Agency to grant waivers to clean air requirements if necessary to ease bottlenecks. So far, Pennsylvania is the only state to request such a waiver, according to an EPA spokeswoman, but that request is still being reviewed.

Years for a real fix
Bush on Tuesday also called for increased gasoline efficiency and greater reliance on alternative fuels like ethanol. But those steps were already included in last year’s energy bill. And there is little than can be done to speed up the relief those measure may eventually offer in the long run.

Advanced gas-electric hybrids, for example, have been touted as the best way to raise gas mileage and ease the growth in U.S. demand. While sales of SUVs and light trucks have been falling as gas prices have risen, the production of hybrids is still extremely limited. Of the roughly 17 million cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. last year, less than a quarter million were hybrids.

Even if production capacity for all high-mileage vehicles were dramatically increased today, with more than 200 million American cars, SUVs and light trucks already on the road, it would be years before these newer, higher mileage cars would have an impact on the overall demand for gasoline. Meanwhile, both Congress and the White House have been slow to take steps to significantly increase government mandates for increased auto mileage.

NBC VIDEO The politics of gas prices April 25: Presidential advisor David Gergen speaks with NBC’s Brian Williams about the politics of gas prices. Nightly News

In the long run, the solution lies in replacing oil with alternative fuels, Bush told the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for ethanol producers.

“The truth of the matter is the long-term strategy is to power our automobiles with something other than oil,” he said.

Substituting alternative fuels for gasoline will also take years, if not decades. Ethanol production has more than doubled in the past four years, and continues to rise thanks to generous incentives in last year’s energy bill. But of roughly 9 million barrels of gasoline consumed in the U.S. every day, total ethanol production amounts to less than 300,000 barrels day — or about 3 percent of total demand.

And for all of the public outrage — and the very real hardship for heavy gasoline consumers or families with little disposable income — the overall impact of higher gasoline prices has been fairly tame.

A widely-watched monthly report on consumer confidence released Tuesday showed the index reaching its highest level in almost four years, despite a 15-percent jump average pump prices the past four weeks. One reason may be that, even at current prices, spending on motor fuel makes up less than 5 percent of the average household budget.

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