Gulf Coast of the U.S. and the East Coast from Houston, Texas, all the way to Philadelphia, PA. Many oil refineries have stored surplus gasoline in railroad tank cars. They order 100 tank cars at a time, fill them and then store them in various railroad yards and depots. I have been contacted by a tugboat captain in the "gulf" and by Oil Refinery personnel to alert me of this scam. Things are getting so difficult to find gasoline storage facilities that Big Oil must find a legitimate reason to shut down their refineries.

The Alaskan Pipeline "problem" is a new trick by the Big Oil Companies. They have so much stored surplus gasoline with no where to put it, they now must shut down the crude oil pipelines, so the refineries have a reason to stop refining more gasoline. This is all part of the scam to take more money from the "little" people by keeping gas price high. PHB

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Aug. 8) - BP's decision to shut down the nation's biggest oil field roiled oil markets, putting pressure on prices at the pump during the peak summer driving season and prompting the government to consider dipping into its emergency stockpile.

Crude oil prices fell 28 cents in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange early Tuesday, likely a result of profit-taking a day after prices jumped more than $2 a barrel in response to news of the loss of 400,000 barrels a day.

BP said it will have to replace most of the 22 miles of so-called transit pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, which produces about 2.6 percent of the nation's daily supply including imports.

Most of the crude oil produced out of Alaska's North Slope each day goes to refineries in Washington, California and Hawaii, said Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, a trade group based in Sacramento, Calif.

Sparano said it's too soon to tell how the shutdown will ultimately affect consumers. "Until we know the full extent of any necessary repairs and how long they might take, it's impossible to predict what the impact might be," he said.

The average U.S. retail price of a gallon of unleaded, regular gasoline was $3.036 on Monday - near its all-time high of $3.057, reached Sept. 5 after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Gasoline futures also rose, indicating the market expects further increases.

The Energy Department said it is prepared to provide oil from the government's emergency supplies if a refinery requests it. "If there is a request for oil we'll certainly take a serious look at that," spokesman Craig Stevens said.

The government has about 700 million barrels in storage on the Gulf Coast to be used in case of a serious supply disruption. The Energy Department in the past has lent some of the oil to refineries when there were disruptions.

Bob Malone, chairman of BP America, said that in a worst-case scenario, it could take weeks or months to replace the pipelines. But the company said it will try to put portions of the network back into operation as they are repaired.

"We estimate it could take between 2-3 months to get it back on line," Bruce Lanni, an industry analyst with A.G. Edwards, wrote in a research note. "However, there are no assurances that it will return to current capacity, given the complexities and age of the reservoirs."

Washington state's largest refinery has enough oil stockpiles to keep the shutdown from becoming a major problem in the next two or three weeks, said Mike Abendhoff, spokesman for BP's Cherry Point refinery in northwest Washington.

"If it prolongs and goes six weeks, eight weeks, three months or four months, then it's going to require us to be more creative in where we get our crude from," he said.

BP operates the Prudhoe Bay oil field for itself and for other oil companies, including ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil. Prudhoe Bay and other oil fields on Alaska's North Slope feed oil into the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline. The North Slope produces approximately 800,000 barrels a day; Prudhoe Bay accounts for half of that.

BP discovered corrosion in the transit lines only after the U.S. Transportation Department ordered their inspection following a spill of up to 270,000 gallons in March. It was the biggest spill in North Slope history, and has become part of a criminal investigation into the company's Alaskan operations.

The loss may hit Alaska hardest. Eighty-nine percent of the state's income is from oil revenue, and central to that cash flow is Prudhoe Bay. The expected loss of 400,000 barrels per day at today's oil prices means $6.4 million lost daily in royalties and taxes, Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said.

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AP Writers Matt Volz in Juneau, Alaska, and Jane Wardell in London contributed to this report.