Heading into the long Labor Day weekend, Triangle gas stations were less busy than they were Thursday. There were fewer motorists filling up, and the $3.19 and $3.29 prices for a gallon of regular unleaded seemed a bit less shocking.

More gas is on the way, coming from multiple sources including European countries, the nation's emergency reserve of oil and a partially restored pipeline coming out of the Gulf Coast that was at 66 percent of normal capacity this morning.

Despite those developments, President Bush's chief economic adviser said that relief for consumers at the pumps could be more than a month away.

U.S. consumers are likely to pay $3 a gallon or more for gasoline for at least "the next six to eight weeks" because of refinery damage, Ben Bernanke said. Motorists formed lines as long as a mile at stations in Georgia on Wednesday, draining pumps before the Labor Day weekend.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the International Energy Agency is considering releasing oil from emergency stockpiles to ease U.S. shortages caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The IEA may release 2 million barrels of oil a day over 30 days, Schroeder said in a news conference in Berlin. Earlier, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said EU member countries are prepared to provide emergency reserves. However, some say it could take up to two weeks for that oil to reach the United States.

To help speed the distribution, Bush may waive a law that prohibits foreign-flagged tankers from shipping fuel between U.S. ports, according to a statement from the Oval Office.

The surge in oil and gasoline prices prompted the U.S. government to loan crude oil from the nation's 700 million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Exxon Mobil Corp. will take 6 million barrels and Valero Energy Corp., the largest independent U.S. oil refiner, 1.5 million barrels.

And, perhaps most encouragingly, Colonial Pipeline Co. has partially restored a major pipeline that brings gas from the Gulf Coast. It's at 66 percent of capacity this morning and may be as high as 85 percent by the weekend, but it will take a few days for the gas to travel from the Gulf to the rest of the country. It won't arrive until after the Labor Day weekend.

Additionally, many of the refineries that feed the pipeline are still nonfunctional. The nine refineries shut as of Thursday had a combined processing capacity of 1.8 million barrels a day, according to an Energy Department report. That represents about 12 percent of total U.S. processing rates.