Gasoline is a good thing. It gets us to work, to the doctor or hospital, to the charity we volunteer for or to the store to buy food. It makes it possible to visit kids and grandmas at Christmas, and to go on vacations in the summer.

And in spite of what you read in the paper--outrageous gasoline prices entered into Google gets you 15,000 links--its current inflation-adjusted price of $2 a gallon is about its median price over its 85-year existence, and with the exception of the 1980s spike, it has been steadily declining over the decades.

Better still, improving technology has increased the number of miles one can drive on a gallon of gasoline, to 22 in 2000 from about 13.5 in the early 1970s . So the cost of gasoline per mile driven has fallen nearly in half, from more than 13 cents to a bit more than seven cents. Meanwhile median income for a family of four (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased to more than $63,000 today from less than $46,000 in the 1970s.

Family income is up, and the cost per mile driven is down, so as a percentage of income, gasoline costs are substantially less and are an economical bargain for all of our families.

Burning gasoline is very much cleaner than it was 20 years ago too. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, lead emissions have nearly disappeared; carbon monoxide is down 62%, sulfur dioxide 52%, nitrogen dioxide 24% and ground-level ozone (smog) 18%.

Cleaner fuel, cheaper fuel and better mileage mean greater access to the things that matter in life. Gasoline-powered cars are a very good thing indeed

So one of our goals should be to continue to make available to all families the opportunities provided by low-cost gasoline burned in safe and energy-efficient (maybe hybrid) automobiles. Perhaps half a century from now we will be driving hydrogen- or solar-powered vehicles that are cheaper, cleaner and more fun. But for people who now have drivers licenses, gasoline-powered cars will be the reality for the rest of their lives.

And with a growing population, that means we will need more gasoline. Good prices and increasingly efficient automobiles have exploded gasoline consumption. We drove our vehicles (including cars, trucks and buses) 1.5 trillion miles in 1980 and nearly three trillion in 2002, which expanded gasoline consumption from 8.7 million barrels a day from 6.4 million. The Department of Energy estimates gasoline demand will continue to increase by nearly 3% a year.

The bad news is that the number of refineries producing petroleum products has dramatically declined. In 1982 there were 301 refineries in the United States producing 6.4 million barrels of gasoline (and seven million barrels of other petroleum products) each day. Twenty years later there were half that number, just 153, but they are more efficient, producing 8.2 million barrels a day of gasoline. But current gasoline consumption is about nine million barrels, so consumption substantially exceeds our domestic refineries' output.

Worse, America built its last oil refinery in 1976, and there are no current plans to build more. Without new refineries the increased volume of gasoline we need each year will have to come from increased imports --by pipeline, truck or marine tanker from Venezuela, Canada, the Caribbean and Europe (no, there are no exporting oil refineries in Arab nations)-- not always an easy thing, particularly in a time of terrorism.

The reason no new refineries have been built is the burden of regulation, first on the permitted emissions of any new refinery, and second on gasoline formulation. Existing refineries are now working to comply with 14 new environmental regulations that come into effect this decade.

There are currently 18 different gasoline formulations needed to satisfy regulations across the U.S. Some parts of the country require oxygen to be added in the winter to reduce carbon monoxide emissions; others require reformulated gasoline to combat summer smog. Cleaner-burning gasoline is required in various states and cities. Such regional regulations--and seasonal consumption swings--make it much more difficult to produce the quantity and quality of gasoline that must be delivered to an area, and much less practical to build a refinery to produce it.

And then politics injects itself into our gas tanks. Congress and the farm lobby want to require ethanol--a product made from corn and already federally subsidized to the tune of $10 billion--in gasoline. That presents enormous supply problems, for ethanol cannot come by pipeline, only by barge and truck. New ethanol requirements--currently stalled in the Senate--would increase the cost of gasoline by about three cents a gallon.

The good news is that the world is not running out of oil. In spite of such predictions that it would--in the 1880s, after both world wars, by the wildly inaccurate but politically correct Club of Rome in 1972 and by today's pessimists--oil reserve estimates are increasing. Offshore drilling is producing oil that wasn't there a few decades ago. Alaska has untapped oil reserves; more oil is being found in Russia, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Technology is making products available from oil sands and liquids derived from natural gas.

In short, we have access to oil; what we need is the ability to refine it, and that is a major political problem. We need refinery construction incentives to keep our gasoline production process up with market demands. Price controls, more additive requirements, ethanol politics, increasing refinery construction regulations and the 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase John Kerry once endorsed would make things worse.

But failing to increase our refining capacity will make things much worse-- fewer trips to visit Mom at the hospital, shop at Staples or Wal-Mart, or see the kids at Christmas. The good news is that an inexpensive supply of gasoline has given us the opportunities we have enjoyed for half a century. We need to keep enjoying them.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month.