when there was the huge oil spill in the gulf, why didn't the price of gas go up exhorbitantly?

The reason the the price didn't skyrocket is because the amount of oil spilled was not really that much when you look at it from a percentage of the total oil consumed. The oil leaked for nearly 3 months and its estimated total was approximately 4.9 million barrels. The world consumes over 85 million barrels of oil per day so that total oil spilled in nearly 3 months equaled about 83 minutes of world oil consumption. Remember this was just 1 of several thousand oil rigs producing oil around the world. When a hurricane is approaching the drillers will idle dozens of rigs at a time to get crews to safety that is why a hurricane will many times cause a bigger spike then the deepwater horizon or other oil spill.

There are several reasons, but the main one is that we receive most of our oil through importation from other countries. Any production from a single domestic rig is inconsequential in terms of our overall oil supply. Of course, it would not have mattered anyway since, as you correctly stated, this was not a production rig. The moratorium of deep water drilling is not so much of a problem because of its impact on oil production, but it does have a negative impact on employment in the region, not just a direct impact on oilfield personnel, but also indirectly in support services and ancillary effects on restaurants, hotels and retail establishments onshore. Such a loss of jobs at a time of unprecedented unemployment in a historically impoverished region is especially difficult.

Price increases after hurricanes are more easily explainable. It is not because drilling is shut down, but because refinery and transport must also stand down until the storm passes, and then there are the delays as refineries restart. That oil was already in the pipeline so to speak, so there is no signifcant loss of oil while waiting for tankers to offload or rigs to restart production.

Not sure entirely, but I reason the following:

BP screwed up. Its their fault, and making people pay for their mistakes would be a huge business mistake. People, including me, would be disgusted if we were forced to pay more money for their gas because they failed to do their job, and are ruining the environment at the same time.

As for hurricanes, that is uncontrollable, and because of the rough ocean conditions, sending a tanker to an oil rig becomes a far more delicate process, and expensive.

the "huge amount of oil" spilled in the Gulf wasn't even close to what we use up in a couple of days! The oil spill had NO effect on our oil flow or oil reserves.