Early Saturday morning, the ocean heaved, and the island of Galveston almost disappeared. Under a battering assault by 13-foot waves and 110 mph winds, this city of over 57,000 was overwhelmed by a dirge of sewage, waste, and flotsam. In its wake, Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas urged residents to stay away. “Do not come back …You cannot live here at this time.” Despite mandatory evacuations, an estimated 140,000 people remained behind to guard their homes or ride the storm out, with almost 23,000 being residents of Galveston or the surrounding area.

Outside of Texas, the panic caused by this annual act of Nature’s vengeance was felt deeply across the country as gas stations were swarmed with gas-hungry motorists on Friday, before the storm had even made landfall.

The Wilco-Hess across the street from Guilford posted regular gas at $3.68 per gallon Thursday night, but by Friday afternoon, it had spiked to $4.19 a gallon. By 4 p.m. both the BPs down the street were completely out of gas, and many other stations followed suit before nightfall.

Saturday morning brought a lower, more stable price of $4.04 a gallon, with only a few stations remaining bone-dry.

So, why did we all panic? We all knew this was no Katrina, and after Ike devastated Haiti, killing 550 and leaving over a million people homeless, the intensity of the winds dropped down to a Category 1.

Yet forecasters were quick to claim the potential for “catastrophic flooding” and damage, according to the BBC and CNN.

With over $8 billion in estimated damages, Ike pales in comparison to Katrina, but the oil magnates seemed to be quaking with fear, prompting skyrocketing prices for relatively little reason.

The Galveston area of Texas is the heartland of America’s oil refineries, where crude oil shipped in is refined into the myriad forms of petroleum.

Seventeen refineries, which lie around the Galveston area, were closed down before the 110 mph winds and 13-foot storm surge submerged the city. Off-shore refineries and drilling platforms also dot the Gulf Coast around Galveston for miles, many of which have since been claimed lost or in some cases even adrift.

Across America and the world, men in suits began to panic, fearing that oil prices would skyrocket, as the devastation of these refineries would mean a debilitating hit to our nation’s access to the all important petroleum molecule. With Katrina, Nature proved we were unprepared for the fury that lies in the ocean, and so many more measures were taken to ensure minimal damages, especially to the vital refineries, many of which have had power restored. Meanwhile, FEMA estimates over a million people are still without power in Ike’s wake.

And, if natural disaster were not enough, investment firm Lehman Brothers announced bankruptcy this weekend. One of the bigwig investment banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers operated at a wholesale level, dealing with governments, companies and other financial institutions. As crude oil is the single most traded commodity on Earth, investment banks like Lehman Brothers have significant stakes in the futures trading and especially within the global oil speculation markets.

But what utterly decimates this undue panic is that even factoring in the damage done by Ike and by Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy, the price per barrel of crude oil has fallen over five dollars for both the US ‘light sweet crude’ and the London ‘Brent crude,’ a more globally accepted standard of crude oil.

This all begs the question of who’s more important to America? Companies and oil magnates, or the citizens and taxpayers who shoulder all these problems? We as taxpayers will be responsible for the Fed’s bailouts of Bear Stearns and the other failing firms in this mortgage crisis, and now we must also suffer unduly high gas prices.

Over 2,500 people filed claims of price-gouging during Ike’s passage, according to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper. Friday, before the storm even hit, Governor Mike Easley declared a state of “abnormal market disruption,” signing an order allowing Cooper to enforce the state’s anti-gouging law, according to ABC News 13 Asheville.

That corporations would even attempt to steal more money from the American taxpayer, in the wake of all this economic recession, is simply astounding. Considering this all comes shortly after Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has resurrected the idea of drilling in Alaska, does it surprise anyone that Palin has jumped another four points in the polls this week?