Well, September 11, 2008 turned out to be a day of terror after all.

Not over some terrorist activity, but over a naturally-occurring gift from Mother Nature:  Hurricane Ike, which is currently poised to hit Texas.  Refineries have been shut down as the storm approaches, and gas prices along the gulf coast have risen sharply in reaction.  Rumors have been running rampant that gas is approaching the $5.00 mark, or at least will approach that price, if the hurricane does enough damage that refineries are delayed in reopening and the supply of gas dwindles.

I don’t know whether what happened next happened across the country or only here in the Lowcountry, but people heard reports on the radio of gas along the coast — the gulf coast — potentially reaching the $5.00 mark.  Then, like that little game we all played in grade school where you form a line and the first person whispers something to the second, and it continues down the line until the last person ends up with a completely different message, the “official” story became that gas prices here in Charleston were not only possibly headed towards the $5.00 mark, but that, inexplicably, they would magically jump up to five bucks a gallon today at 5:00pm.

Five at five?  Sounds like a great marketing ploy if whatever you sell is normally more than five bucks.  But it’s not the kind of thing you’d do to advertise a price hike.  And why 5:00pm?  Why not 4:00pm?  That way, they’d be sure to get even the rush hour traffic composed of people who sneak out of the office a bit early when the boss isn’t looking.

Gas stations all around Charleston were suddenly dealing with long lines of angry customers.  Some were suggesting — suggesting, mind you — that people limit their gas purchase to ten gallons…just in case.  Naturally, that fueled speculation of a potential gas shortage.

Suddenly, it was 1979 or so.

All afternoon, our newsroom was getting emails and telephone calls from people who had heard from a friend or a friend of a friend that gas prices were already up around $4.50.  We were hearing that people were getting nasty in line.  (As if a price of $4.50 wouldn’t come close to giving people a reason to be nasty!)  Some people had been informed that by Saturday, there would be no gas left.  Ever?  Seriously?

I had to get a few gallons’ worth of gas this evening, and I paid $3.65 a gallon.  Just last week, I paid about $3.45.  A nice two-dime increase in a single day.

And have I mentioned that this hurricane hasn’t made landfall, yet?  Of course, when has that ever stopped an oil company from sneaking the prices up?

I’m all for getting more hybrids on the road and reducing our dependence on oil as soon as possible.  But in the meantime, until hybrids are affordable for everyone, we need one more new law where gasoline is concerned:  under no circumstances can a gas station raise the price of gas they’ve already paid for and that is sitting in their tanks waiting to be pumped out, just because gas they buy some other time might be higher.

Can I get an amen?

Of course on a day like this, when everyone’s scrambling to get their gas before the pumps “go dry,” the normal rules of supply and demand would still trump the law:  with demand that high, there’s no way the price wasn’t going up.

Bin Laden’s probably laughing at all of this new terror.  I doubt if he could have done better himself.