If you’re like me, when you pass gas stations lately, you kind of put your head down and look away.

I will seriously drive until I’m on fumes, in hopes that somewhere along the next couple of days, something will happen to produce a little less pain at the pumps.

Gas in my particular neck of the woods is around $2.45 a gallon, and while my car isn’t a “gas guzzler,” that still hurts.

Hurricane Harvey has disrupted fuel flow, so we may need to tighten our belts for a bit.

In response, Energy Secretary Rick Perry has released 4.5 million barrels, with the first million being released on Thursday from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the additional 3.5 million barrels released on Friday.

The first million was a mix of heavier and lighter grades of crude oil. It was sent to a refinery owned by Phillips 66.

For Friday’s shipment:

The Energy Department has slated the oil to be delivered in tranches to large refineries owned by Marathon Petroleum Corporation and Valero from the reserve’s Bayou Choctaw storage facility about 12 miles southwest of Baton Rouge, La.

Secretary Perry is expecting a two week bump in the price of gas, due to complications from the storm.

 “Without trying to affect the market place, we are trying to be as stable as we can, making sure folks can, in fact, have access to gasoline,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry told Bloomberg Television.

If it will keep the price of gas from climbing any higher, three cheers for Secretary Perry!