The price of gasoline rose $0.79 from last year because of the increasing price of crude oil and the Hurricane Katrina devastation.

“(Twenty-five to 28 percent) of our daily oil production in the U.S. comes from the Gulf of Mexico, and on Monday, 1,043,681 of the 1.5 million barrels of oil produced daily from the Gulf of Mexico were shut off,” said Dr. Robert Finley, senior geologist and director of the Energy and Earth Resources Center in Champaign.

With increasing gas prices frustrating drivers nationwide, government officials and local engineers are working on ways to solve the problem.

Finley said nine of the U.S. oil refineries were out of commission when Hurricane Katrina first hit land. But by the end of this week, he hopes 50 percent of the refining capacity will be restored. President George W. Bush released crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily replace the oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, Finley said.

“We have approximately 700 million barrels in storage and up to 2 million barrels will be released a day,” Finley said.

In one 42 gallon barrel of crude oil, 19.7 percent of the oil goes towards gasoline production, and globally, the demand for diesel, trucks and aviation fuel have also increased, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“The increase in demand is due to the rapid growth of the U.S. and China economies,” Finley said. “Within the last ten years, China has gone from being self-sufficient in their oil production to importing massive quantities.”

To accommodate increases in gasoline prices, the state government has implemented certain regulations to help reduce the cost.

“Under the Ryan Administration, the Illinois state tax on gasoline was suspended,” Finley said.

He also said citizens need to realize that gasoline is not an endless resource, and they need to conserve it.

“Make efficient choices in the car that you drive and combine trips,” Finley said.

Like many drivers nationwide, University students are adjusting their lifestyles to the increase of gasoline prices.

“I use my car on a daily basis to drive to work, and with a family that lives four hours away, trips home will be less frequent,” said Liz Martin, senior in FAA.

Even though gasoline prices have decreased by five and a half cents from Monday to Tuesday, engineers are working out short and long-term solutions to these problems.

“The government has put tens of millions of dollars into hydrogen research to essentially come up with a storage mechanism to hold a lot of hydrogen and be safe to compete with fossil fuels as a means to run automobiles,” said Duane Johnson, materials science and engineering professor who is currently working on hydrogen storage research for the Department of Energy Freedom car.

Three goals of the Freedom car are producing the energy to isolate the hydrogen atoms, effectively distributing the atoms to the masses and finding material that can store it, Johnson said. He is working on the latter two goals.

“Currently, gasoline is distributed through methane pipes,” Johnson said. “It would be nice to replace the methane atoms with hydrogen atoms, but hydrogen will react differently to the metal in the pipe than methane does. The hydrogen will ultimately cause the pipe to crumble and cause leaks because of the chemical environment inside the pipe.”

Johnson is researching how to not make the chemical properties of the pipe change when it reacts with hydrogen and is also looking for a material to absorb hydrogen in a small volume and release when needed.

A completion date for the Freedom car initative cannot be determined due to design constraints and abandonment of the underground gas distribution system, Johnson said.

“Are you going to rip out every methane pump in the United States and replace it with a pipe that’s OK for hydrogen?,” Johnson said. “Forget it. That will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Another solution to the gas dilemma is the Hybrid car.

“The Hybrid car is just as energy efficient as the Freedom car, and we don’t have to redesign a whole new system of fuel distribution,” Johnson said. “The hybrid only costs $3,000 more than a normal car and could be filled up at a gas station, while partially reducing pollution to the environment.”

While economically- and environmentally-friendly solutions are a prospect one day, Johnson said not everyone has the monetary means to adopt these solutions.

“There’s no cost-effective way to have the perfect solution,” Johnson said.