A bit of sobering news this morning:

“‘Things are looking pretty bad for the upcoming summer driving season,’ said Flynn, citing a new government report showing that the U.S. stockpiles of gasoline fell by 5 million barrels in the past week, much more than analysts were expecting.

Flynn said he believes gasoline prices will head into record territory — currently a nationwide average of $3.07 — by the height of the summer season.

‘This is the time of year when we’re supposed to be building supplies, but it seems like the refiners just can’t get ahead of what has been very, very strong demand,’ he said.

Today’s report shows that the national supply of gas is at the low end of its average range for this time of year, meaning the United States will have less gas in the tank before the peak summer driving season in the coming months.”

We’re at over $3/gallon here in Phoenix. I understand that gas is already significantly more expensive to the west of us.

Interestingly enough I noticed that there were fewer giant SUV’s on the road here in Phoenix yesterday and lots more small cars. I don’t know if that’s because the snow-birds have flown north again or not, but it’s a definite change from what we saw here over Christmas.

We’re already talking about ways here in the Diocese of Arizona to do more of our diocesan work online or by conference call – given that it can take an entire tank of gas to spend the day on the road to attend a diocesan meeting. I spent a bunch of my time in Bethlehem over the last few years getting the same sort of infrastructure built up.

I wonder if other dioceses have started setting up similar email, video and telephone conference networks…

Thanks to TitusOneNine for the pointer.

Read the rest here: ABC News: ‘Strong Possibility’ Gas Will Rise to $4