Pump Rage? Get Even by Buying ExxonMobil

If there's one thing you can pin on the oil companies, it's that during their long trek in the wilderness in the 1980s and 1990s, when prices fell dramatically, they failed to maintain their refineries adequately. This shortfall in investment led in part to the tragic 2005 explosion at the Texas City refinery of BP(BP Quote), which killed 15 people, as well as the recent fire at the McKee refinery operated by Valero Energy(VLO Quote).

Combine the poor maintenance with a stunning lack of qualified refinery engineers and some bad luck, and you've got the current mess, in which several of the nation's biggest refineries are running at half-speed. As much as 500,000 barrels per day of gasoline capacity is unavailable.

'Methadone' in the Tank

The government, meanwhile, has not exactly covered itself in glory. For a variety of good reasons, for example, new federal rules have made a type of fuel used by farmers called ultra-low-sulfur diesel difficult to transport nationwide in conventional pipelines. So farmers have had to turn to more-expensive grades of diesel that are refined and sold locally, while the cheaper diesel has been sent overseas, where transportation rules are less stringent.

What about ethanol, the supposed miracle fuel made from corn that President Bush has pushed as an alternative? It's kind of a bad joke. As a Deutsche Bank analyst pointed out recently, ethanol is the energy equivalent of "methadone" -- a palliative, not a cure. At present, generating and transporting ethanol require huge tax subsidies, and the net savings of foreign energy dependence are negligible, since corn, its feedstock, is farmed with oil-powered tractors and nourished with gas-based fertilizers and oil-based pesticides.