The former baseball pitcher Satchel Paige used to say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” That may also apply to what’s ahead at the gas pump.

We all know $70 a barrel oil and Hurricane Katrina add up to higher gasoline prices, but how high? From several fellas intimately involved in the gasoline business, I get forecasts of $3.50 and $4 a gallon, the latter for New York City, where gas recently topped $3 a gallon.

The $3.50 forecast comes from Alan Gaines, a former crack institutional energy analyst and presently chairman and CEO of Dune Energy, a Houston based natural gas company that’s 78% owned by Itera Holdings, Russia’s second-biggest gas producer. If you drive a car, you have to figure you’ll pay more at the gasoline pump in the peak summer driving season than in the winter. Not this year though. Just the reverse will be true, Mr. Gaines says. He also expects gas to climb another 50 cents in the next three to four months and reach an average of $3.50 a gallon in New York City.

A Los Angeles energy consultant, Leighton Kerner, is in a similar camp. “I would imagine we’re six to nine months away from a national average of about $3.50 a gallon,” he said. “All the events in progress we see in gas and oil point to that.”

At present, the price of gasoline – which seems to change daily – is averaging $2.63 a gallon nationally.

An even heftier price is seen by the folks who fill up your tank at the Mobil station at East 62nd Street and Second Avenue, right off the East River Drive and one of the city’s busiest service stations. “I think $3.50 is too low,” one of the station’s attendants said. “If oil prices stay crazy like they are, we’ll be up to $4 a gallon in the fall. And nobody will say ‘I won’t pay it’ because nobody wants to give up their car.”

Explaining his rationale for higher gasoline prices in the winter than in the summer, Mr. Gaines ticked off the following reasons:

* Very tight domestic gasoline inventories

* Extremely strong demand despite record prices

* Atremendous number of SUVs on the road, which average about 10 to 12 miles a gallon

* Domestic refineries running at record high output rates, leading to breakdowns

* Supply disruptions arising from hurricane-related storms such as Katrina, which wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico, which provides about 25% of America’s oil and gas output

Aggravating the supply-demand picture, Mr. Gaines says, is a new energy law this year that will disrupt the gasoline market. The reason: Refineries will have to stop using an additive called MTBE, which has been described as unsafe for the environment.

Mr. Gaines expects a worsening situation. From the end of the second quarter to the end of the third quarter, he expects gasoline inventories to decline by 14.9 million barrels, the biggest such drop in four years. He calculates that gasoline inventories at the end of September will consist of about 200.4 million barrels, which is 4.3 million barrels lower than a year ago and 2.1 million barrels less than the average of the past five years.

In the face of this, he estimates demand in the first quarter of 2006, which is the dead of winter, at a record 9 million barrels a day, versus 8.2 to 8.3 million a year earlier.

“If you’re compiling a holiday gift list this year,” Mr. Gaines says, “I would include gasoline, because it could be in short supply this Christmas.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Gaines, one of the most accurate forecasters over the past year as to where the price of crude is headed, tells me, “It’s still up, up, and away for oil.” Currently hovering around $70 a barrel, oil, he figures, should top $75 a barrel this winter and hit $80 or higher in a year or two.

His chief reasoning: supply disruptions, a ritzy premium for possible terrorist activity, refinery constraints, increasing global demand (“India and China can’t get enough oil”), and decreasing American production.

Yet other factors: limited capacity from Russia and very little incremental output from OPEC. For OPEC to increase oil output substantially, Mr. Gaines says, it would have to spend billions of dollars on exploration and development, especially in Saudi Arabia, whose major fields have been declining, a trend he believes will accelerate.

An obvious question: With energy shares having gone through the roof the past couple of years, what’s the smartest way to play these stocks now? Mr. Gaines’s thinking: “I’d be a much pickier buyer and look at companies with strong management and undeveloped acreage. I would be wary of any laggards. Don’t bottom fish. People always want a bargain. But if an energy stock is lagging, there’s a reason it hasn’t gone up. Playing energy now is a momentum game [or chasing the hottest performers].”

Mr. Gaines’s favorites, all of which he’s owned for several years, are Anadarko Petroleum, Carrizo Oil and Gas, Pogo Producing, Vintage Petroleum, and Chesapeake Energy (which is the largest holder of undeveloped acreage). He views all of them, save for Chesapeake, as ripe takeover candidates and thinks each has the potential to generate additional gains of 25% to 50% over the next 12 months.