John Rice Carter: “I always wonder if sometimes people back home are sitting around saying so what does this mean to me. The last time we…”

“I always wonder if sometimes people back home are sitting around saying so what does this mean to me. The last time we had a spike in the price of gasoline, it started when they had a refinery fire in Illinois. And all of a sudden, the speculators said, whoa, we've got to reduce refining capacity in the oil and gas industry right now. They shut down about half that plant in Illinois. And all of a sudden, we started to see the futures start to move on oil. And that was the kickoff of $5 gasoline in some parts of the country. Why? Because the speculators say, well, if refinery capacity is reduced, gasoline is going to be in more short supply. Futures, I can buy now, sell later. I can make money off this commodity. And the price started up. Other things happened then, speculators, all of that can be talked about. But it started. Everybody says that there was a fear of reduced refining capacity because right about that same time we had the hurricanes, which reduced refining capacity over in New Orleans.”