If people panic and rush to fill up, it would suck the system dry, even if there were no production issues.

Does someone have the calculation on this? For instance, I filled both cars yesterday. Both were half-full to begin with. If cars on average are half full (which seems about right except for those too poor to put in more than a few dollars gas at a time - who mostly won't be finding extra dollars to fill up today either), and the average car is driven 1,000 miles per month, then if it's getting 20 m.p.g. that's 50 gallons, or 1.67 gallons per day. Assuming a largish tank, that's 3 fillups a month. So everyone topping off their tanks should use up about 5 days' forward supply.

However, once that's done, you're looking at the normal rate of consumption - or lower, if prices really surge, since people will conserve. In fact, people are likely to delay their next fill up until they see prices falling again. So on the back side there will be a lot of people running with less-than-half-full tanks.

Looks to me like the main effect of filling up now is getting ahead of the gas stations posting higher prices on what's the same gas whether I put it in my car yesterday, or four days from now when I would anyway. The belief that good citizens should wait to buy when prices go up strikes me as the opposite of good economics, except of course for those selling the oil.