Eight dollars a gallon gas?

It seems strange that hurricanes have been striking the gulf coast for decades but the price of fuel never seemed to fluctuate. Many experts claim that for gasoline to sustain $3 dollars a gallon that a barrel of oil would have to top $100 dollars. My wife filled up a few days after Katrina at 3.499 at the I80 on ramp in Grand Island, Nebraska. Is this simply price gouging? Fuel prices are likely to keep climbing for years to come. This commodity is in very high demand all over the world. It also remains one of the few commodities in America that has seen little inflation over the past two decades. When I learned to drive twenty years ago gas was rarely less than a dollar a gallon, and until recent events in the Middle East the price had remained fairly constant. One can't say the same thing about the housing market over the same period!!!!!