His company owns 170 oil and gas wells in Wyoming, but Peter Wold pays the same price at the pump as all motorists.

"I had to fill my car up this morning, and it was painful. It wasn't even empty, and it cost me $40 to fill it up," he said Wednesday.

Wold is president and co-owner of Casper-based Wold Oil Properties Inc. Due to a major disruption of the nation's oil supply chain caused by Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, those prices are expected to creep up toward $3 per gallon as people hit the road this Labor Day weekend.

Wold said if the price of gas can stun even the owner of an oil company, then people everywhere should think about what they can do to expedite production and conserve energy. But just how quickly and how drastically Americans can do either is uncertain.

Despite the surge in gas prices, the American Automobile Association estimates the number of Americans who will drive 50 miles or more from their homes this Labor Day weekend will increase 9 percent over last year to 34.5 million.

"Conservation is going to be very important. Things like carpooling, leave the room turn the lights out, turn the thermostat down," Wold said, referring to everyday changes all Americans can make.

Wold stressed that people also need to get behind efforts to increase the nation's domestic oil and natural gas production, and much of that work can be done in Wyoming. Wold noted that there are four companies vying to build a major new natural gas pipeline connection to the Midwest. He said federal permitting should be accelerated to get the job done so Wyoming can reap the economic rewards of supplying growing demand in Eastern states.

Though unstable and unpredictable, oil and natural gas prices are not expected to settle to the levels that were three times less just three years ago, so there's a lot of revenue to be had.

"I think with this kind of economic stimulus - high prices for oil and gas - this industry is going to respond," Wold said.

But even with a big carrot, there may be a limit to what Rocky Mountain states can do to feed the nation's growing energy demand, according to Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency in Colorado.

Hundreds of rigs are drilling the Rockies today. There might be hundreds more if rigs and workers were available, but the industry is struggling to find those resources.

Eventually, drillers will figure out how to tap some 137 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Rockies, and possibly even 800 billion barrels of oil shale. In the meantime, energy consumption in the United States accelerates.

Udall said in terms of increasing energy demand, the United States is grafting on the equivalent of a new California every 11 years. Already, the nation consumes 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas each year.

Rocky Mountain producers recently asserted that because off-shore production is dwindling, they must drill some 400,000 new wells in the Rockies during the next 15 years just to keep up with U.S. energy demand - and that's even with the best of energy conservation scenarios.

"The president should park his mountain bike and return to Washington. Strong leadership and a plea to Americans to conserve gasoline and diesel are in order," Udall said.

Katrina underscores just how easily the U.S. oil production and refining infrastructure can fall short of meeting demand.

"This hurricane came at a terrible time, a moment when we were 'redlining' all parts of the oil supply chain. Gasoline refineries are now the weakest link," Udall said. "They have been operating at 90-plus percent capacity for many months to meet U.S. gasoline demand, which, amazingly, is up, year over year, even in the face of these large price hikes we have seen."

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 682-3388 or dzeffer@trib.com.