BILL HEMMER: With the Labor Day weekend soon upon us and many hitting the road for the holiday, indications that gas prices are headed higher once again. As CNN's Kitty Pilgrim reports, there is more fuel on the economic fire.</s>KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Late August is road trip time for most of the country. Demand for gasoline is high, refining capacity has been brutally tight, and all it took was a fire at a Chicago refinery to drive prices sky-high again. The Citgo Petroleum Corporations' Illinois refinery was badly damaged by a fire in mid-August. It produces about 16 percent of the state's supply. Gas prices rose for the third week in a row, hitting a national average price of $1.48 a gallon, although still below the stratospheric levels hit last spring. What makes the refinery fire so catastrophic is different parts of the country each use a different formula of gasoline, each a unique blend formulated for emissions guidelines.</s>ED MURPHY, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE: When there is a shortage of that unique blend, it is difficult or impossible to bring supplies from elsewhere in the country to make up for that shortfall. That is exactly what we are seeing now in the Chicago, Milwaukee area.</s>PILGRIM: The Environmental Protection Agency decided to temporarily relax emission standards for the Midwest, through September 15. The timing is awful. In addition to it being high demand season, some refineries have been switching over from gasoline to the winter product, heating fuel.</s>DAVE NUSSBAUM, INDEPENDENT TRADER: It's the change of season, so a lot of times you get your last hurrah in gasoline, you get a big run like this and heating oil can also be making a move.</s>PILGRIM, (on camera): Refining capacity is a problem that's here to stay, however. Gas consumption drops off in the fall, but one way it is even harder to predict spikes in heating oil demand depends on the economy and the weather, and both are pretty hard to predict. Kitty Pilgrim, CNN Financial News, New York.
High Demand for Gas During Road Trip Season