John McCain’s crowd-pleasing chants of “drill here, drill now” and “drill baby, drill” seem like distant echoes of a quainter time — before the debacle on Wall Street.

America’s quarter-of-a century ban on offshore drilling officially ended Tuesday but the focus on expanding exploration and the concern over surging oil and other commodity prices are being swept away by the financial tsunami in the broader economy.

Congress was inundated with a raft of energy bills but it is probable most will fall by the wayside as lawmakers deal with the $700 billion bailout later this week.

McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, scored points on the campaign trail this summer with his call to open up America’s coasts to more drilling, in a bid to aid the beleaguered driver paying almost half a sawbuck for a gallon of fuel.

At the time Democrats, including Barack Obama, were dead against the rigs again setting up off America’s shores.  Environmentalists scorned drilling as a panacea for high gas prices. Yet in August, with the polls showing support for drilling and oil still near record levels, the Dems made an about face to support limited offshore drilling.

Now Congress is subsumed by the bailout and members are itching to get on the campaign trail.

Many legislative efforts could go on hold for several months, and this could have wide ranging ramifications for industry. Congress  passed its stop gap funding bill last weekend and did not, as expected, tuck in wording to extend the ban on offshore drilling.

The Democrats vow to reinstate the ban but it likely won’t be next year. So don’t expect big oil to make a dash for the Grand Banks just yet, especially with weakening oil prices.

In a sign of the concern of a global slowdown, the DJ Iron & Steel Index has shed 15.6 percent in the past week. It is the worst-performing of the stock sector indexes tracked by DJ. (See the DJ sector indexes here). The coal stocks index is the second, followed by Industrial Metals & Mining. In fact, of the ten worst performing, only two are directly financial sector indexes and the rest are directly related to commodities, basic materials and transportation.

In the futures market, U.S. November crude settled down $10.52 to $96.37 a barrel, after touching a session low of $95.04 after lawmakers rejected the bailout package.

“This decision is a shock to the system,” said Sarah Emerson, director of Energy Security Analysis Inc. “The oil market is reacting strongly in part because of the implications of a weak economy on demand.”

Gasoline shortages in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and parts of Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ike have driven some consumers to desperate measures as they hunt for places to fill up. People were cutting in long lines, fighting at gas stations, and hoarding gas in multiple containers, according to local news reports.

Hurricane Ike shut 15 refineries in the Gulf Coast’s refinery row and shut several pipelines as well. The outages have driven U.S. gasoline inventories to their lowest levels since 1967, and refinery utilization rates have sunk to their lowest rates on record.

The disruptions have upended the traditional pecking order of gas prices: Less supply from Gulf Coast refineries has taken away the region’s traditional advantage in gasoline pricing. Motorists in California, meanwhile, have enjoyed a respite from paying the highest gasoline prices in the continental United States.

By Wednesday, 18 states still had higher gasoline prices than California — which normally has the highest pump prices because of tougher environmental fuel standards and a lack of access to supplies produced east of the Rockies.

With a slowing economy and seemingly routine disruptions in supply, it’s hard to know which way gas prices are heading. What do you think U.S. residents will be paying at the pump a month from now?

Vote in our poll below, or go to the news prediction site HubDub to place a virtual wager on gas prices.

How much will a gallon of gasoline cost in the U.S. on October 29?

The volatile and worsening U.S. financial crisis and the on-again, off-again plans for a $700 billion U.S. government rescue plan to free up credit from Wall Street to Main Street made Chicago grain markets a sideshow in the past week — but promised to continue to keep grain traders on tenterhooks Sunday night until a resolution is found.
     CBOT electronic markets on Sunday night were like Asian markets and OTC markets around the world — waiting.
     Lack of a credible agreement — and “credible” might remain a key debating point even after a deal was agreed — was sure to continue the black mood of all market speculators, worldwide, amid bank failures, frozen credit and a political witches’ cauldron a month ahead of a U.S. presidential election. On the other hand, agreement by the main opponents of the compromise — conservative Republican and Democrats facing the voters in a month — to bite the bullet and back a deal would likely boost a relief rally in equity and bond markets, as well as the dollar.
     Scenarios abound about the bailout drama. If credit tightens with no bailout, trade finance would tighten too and the dollar fall. Would that be bullish grains as importers rush to book shipments? Or would spec money in all markets flee to safe harbors like T-bills and gold, weighing on  grains and even oil.

       Last week, the Chicago Board of Trade corn, soybean and wheat markets saw their share of volatility as investors and grain firms sat waiting for word from Washington. It was a low volume trading week as traders kept to the sidelines — too risky for most — with grain prices and open interest close to unchanged on the week.
     “The uncertainty is creating big problems for everything,” Roy Huckabay, analyst with The Linn Group in Chicago, said on Friday.
     “If they come up with a bailout package I don’t necessarily think it’s bullish commodities — it’s a matter whether it will calm people’s fears a little,” one CBOT trader said.
     There’s also a lot of talk within the halls of Chicago trading firms and on the CBOT trading floor about the likelihood of month-end, quarter-end liquidation of portfolios that could occur on Monday and Tuesday, the trader added. “We will have to keep our eye on that.”
     Then, after the month-end book adjustments, it’s the start of harvest across the Corn Belt, seasonally a bearish period for grain prices.
     However — not unexpected in a season when traders have learned to expect the unexpected — speculators may come back in buying on weather fears: the upper Midwest could see its first killing frost of the season by Wednesday or Thursday morning, something that with this year’s lagging growth of the crops could spur spec demand.
     But some Chicago traders also brushed off the threat, saying last week’s warm, dry weather was ideal for helping the delayed maturity of late-planted or flood-sogged corn and beans, helping crops to catch up and ripen and this reduce the potential of freeze damage. Weekly crop progress updates will be issued by USDA late on Monday afternoon, after markets close.
     Another piece of information that traders will scrutinize comes on Tuesday, when USDA will report the amount of corn, soybeans and wheat held by farmers and commercial grain firms on Sept. 1. The numbers are key to grain traders and analysts after two years of huge drawdowns in grains due to global droughts, rising Asian demand and burgeoning biofuels use.

Crude oil futures sheds close to 4% on the NYMEX. Copper, corn and wheat end lower. But not gold.

Dec gold settles up $6.50 at $8885.0 an ounce.

The ‘gold bugs’ are feeling vindicated by the markets in the past weeks. Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee’s Bill Murphy predicted this week that the Treasury-led bailout plan give a “staggering” boost to gold because it would feed inflation and hurt confidence in U.S. markets, Frank Tang reports.

Gold’s rise above $1,000 an ounce in March was an “I told you so” moment for GATA, Tang writes, noting that that conventional investors view GATA as a conspiracy-theory group, with very little evidence to back up its claim that governments, central banks and commercial banks have colluded to keep the price of gold weak.

(Pictured: Lam Sai Wing, chairman of Hang Fung Gold Technology Group, poses in a washroom decorated with gold and jewellery in his jewellery shop in Hong Kong in this April 24, 2006 file photo. Lam died after a sudden sickness in his home on September 25, 2008 at the age of 53, his company announced on late September 26, 2008. REUTERS/Paul Yeung/Files)

T. Boone Pickens is pretty calm for a guy who lost more than a billion dollars.

The Texas energy tycoon has put his considerable wealth behind a renewable energy effort, saying he’s sick and tired of seeing America send all of its money overseas to pay for imported oil. But he’s also suffered a considerable loss on his energy investments: He “missed the turn.”

Read about it here and watch edited video below.

It didn’t take long for Argentine farmers to lose their contented glow after defeating the government over a tax hike on soy exports earlier this year.

The calm that descended on the Pampas plains in the aftermath of the four-month farming conflict was predictably short-lived, and the disgruntled farmers are rattling their sabers again. While they haven’t said what they plan to do, the farm leaders have promised to announce their next move in the coming days.

Talks with the agriculture secretary have not eased their concerns over the state of the ranching industry, the dairy sector and the dreaded export taxes. Many farmers are worse off than with the higher rate, because they lost the rebates and subsidies that the government agreed to during the conflict.

This, coupled with the worst drought for decades and weaker grains prices due to the global financial turmoil mean the bad mood may be near breaking point in the countryside. Will they go on strike again? It’s hard to imagine. President Cristina Fernandez has successfully driven the farmers off the front pages and public sympathy does not look ready to rally behind them.

Gasoline shortages in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and parts of Florida have driven some consumers to desperate measures as they hunt for places to fill up. “Some people are even following tankers to the station and then they descend upon the station,” said Randy Bly, a spokesman for the AAA’s Auto Club South Chapter, Rebekah Kebede and Bernie Woodall report.U.S. gasoline inventories shrunk to the lowest level since 1967 after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike shut Gulf Coast oil refineries. Thursday, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman reiterated that the country was not seeking emergency fuel supplies from abroad.

Elsewhere in commodities:

• The CFTC is probing the silver market, the wsj.com reports. In May of this year, the CFTC released a report finding no manipulation of the market. Yet Stephen Obie, acting director of the agency’s division of enforcement, tells the Journal the CFTC takes “the threat of manipulation in the futures and options markets very seriously and employ a number of measures to prevent, identify and prosecute it.”
• Funding for two iron ore projects in Peru has been delayed because of the global financial crisis, Australian miner Strike Resources Ltd said on its website.

    Top officials from the world’s largest fertilizer maker were in London this week trying to convince investors their stock has been unjustly thumped.
    Potash Corp of Saskatchewan shares at the Toronto Stock Exchange have lost 30 percent of their value since a mid-June peak, even though prices for potash fertilizer continued their meteoric rise.
    “Not that I’m whining about it, but we do have the lowest multiples we’ve ever had. Ever. And I’m not sure it reflects the true value of the company,” said Wayne Brownlee, the chief financial officer of Potash Corp, which plans to boost its potash capacity by 80 percent to capture higher prices.
    Hedge funds fled commodities and unwound Potash Corp positions since June, Chief Executive Bill Doyle said.
    Doyle continued to hold fast to his rosy outlook, noting producers are short on potash and prices should continue to rise this year, although not at the same rate as last year, when they tripled.
    Grain prices should remain historically high, Doyle said, leaving farmers flush and able to pay more for fertilizer.
    “Farmers will grouse that their costs are up. They are up, about $39 billion, but their receipts are up $50 billion. So the math works,” Doyle said.
    And despite recent events rocking the world’s financial capitals, demand for grain will continue to grow, keeping pressure on supplies, Doyle said, unless the world economy slips into a depression.
    “A lot of the people (in developing economies) who have this aspiration to eat better, I guarantee you, wouldn’t know what had happened to the investment banking community in New York,” he said. “It’s not high on their priority list, where food is.”

Photo: REUTERS/David Stobbe    Potash is piled into a large storage facility which is then loaded into a train car and transported in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in this December 2006 file photo.

Back-to-back hurricanes have hobbled a huge chunk of U.S. oil and refining production in the biggest hit to the energy sector since at least 2005, and the recovery is moving along more slowly than some energy analysts had expected. Commercial gasoline inventories in the world’s biggest energy consumer have dropped to their lowest on record due to the effects of the storms and pipeline problems have triggered shortages at the pumps in parts of the East Coast and Midwest. Energy experts have said the severe supply disruptions have kept oil prices buoyed above $100 a barrel despite overarching economic gloom that is hitting the global markets.

Click the buttons on the graph below to see the impact hurricanes Gustav and Ike have had on crude oil, natural gas, and refining production since Gustav swept into the Gulf of Mexico in late August.