Yesterday, after I got off my plane and grabbed my bag I headed off to find my car in the mammoth parking garage located at Baltimore Washington International Airport. After, yet again failing to remember which floor I parked on and numerous trips up and down the elevator, I was even more disappointed as I turned the ignition.

When I left the week before, I decided to put off filling the tank and returned to a gas gauge hiding the middle of the “E.” I went to the airport last Saturday when gas was selling for about $2.30 and, thanks to my incessant desire to save a couple quarters by timing the gasoline market perfectly; I decided to put off filling it up.

After all, what's the worst that could happen? Well, the worst did happen. The gasoline market spiked and now the average price for a gallon of regular gas is $2.51. That's 22% more than we had to pay just a month ago.

The reason for the spike is not because oil prices ticked up to $62 earlier this week before falling once again to $60 today. It was because Canada's gasoline shortage finally crept into the United States.

A couple of weeks ago, a fire at one of Imperial Oil's (IMO:AMEX) 118,000 per day refineries in northern Canada and a Canada National Railway union strike forced the shutdown of 25 gas stations in Ontario, shortages and rationing at 5% of Shell Canada gas stations, and 100 out of 400 Esso stations were completely out of gas.

On top of that, many of California and other west coast refineries were shut down for maintenance. As a result, Californians had to pay more than $3 for a gallon of regular and San Francisco area gas stations were getting away with charging $3.12 per gallon.

For the time being, it's not looking to good for your average driver and commuters. But more importantly, it is events like these drive up gas prices and show us that there really is a refinery glut in North America. We don't have enough to meet the continuing demand for gasoline.

As usual, when prices of something are soaring there's got to be some sort of investment opportunity. And the way to play rising gasoline prices is with those companies involved in the refining process.

First, there's construction giant Fluor (FLR:NYSE). On Thursday, Fluor booked a $1.8 billion deal with Marathon Oil (MRO:NYSE) to expand Marathon's refinery plant in Garyville, Lousiana. Fluor is a diversified construction company that focuses on big jobs. And building or expanding a refinery plant is always a big job.

The other way to play rising gasoline costs is with Valero Energy (VLO:NYSE). Valero is a San Antonnio, Texas-based oil refiner and marketer. It refines oil into gasoline, diesel fuel, and petrochemicals. Essentially, Valero utilizes its 18 refineries around the world to turn crude oil into useful products.

And Valero has done very well as oil prices remain high. Over the past three years, Valero's profits have tripled from $1.79 billion in 2004 to $5.46 billion in 2006. Higher oil prices are hurting this critical link in the fossil fuel energy market.

Finally, Big Oil stocks like ExxonMobil (XOM:NYSE) and Chevron (CVX:NYSE) do have very large refining, marketing, distribution, and sales operations. However, as with most other mega-cap stocks you really don't get the benefits of a pure-play opportunity on the increasing value of refining operations and capacity.

Big Oil companies are heavily involved in every step of the oil industry all the way from the grueling and expensive process of searching for new sources to selling it to the end consumer at your local gas station.

It's best to steer clear of Big Oil if you expect gasoline prices to continue to rise. Big Oil profits and their stock prices aren't highly correlated to gasoline prices and there will be limited benefit from rising gasoline prices. After all, potential 5-10% gains over four months just aren't worth the trouble.

The refining crunch is presenting an excellent opportunity in the energy sector, but there are still a few better ones. Primarily, the search for oil presents the best one and there's no company working harder than the one I'm talking about here.