To follow up on last night’s post, yesterday there were discussions of a coming spike in gasoline prices given all the uncertainty over the Houston-area gasoline refineries in Hurricane Ike’s path, and I heard from several sources that already in Raleigh several gasoline stations had begun rationing ? limiting consumers to small purchases of gasoline, usually 10 gallons ? and raising prices. On my commute I saw prices ranging from $3.519/gallon to $3.899/gallon on the same block.

Edited to add: The N&O has an article today about one company engaged in rationing on the basis of fending off panic buying. “The Pantry, which owns more than 1,600 stores in 11 states, put up signs at all of its stations asking customers to limit their purchases to 10 gallons of gas. That includes all of the Kangaroo stations and Petro Express stations owned by The Pantry, which is based in Sanford.”