Gas prices rose another five cents to $4.76 a gallon on Friday, capping a week of soaring pressure at the pump in a post-holiday spike that saw new records set daily.
According to the AAA travel agency’s gas tracker, normal unleaded was $4.62 on Tuesday, swiftly exceeding the annual Memorial Day peak. Diesel prices also broke their previous high set in May, averaging $5.58 per gallon on Friday.
“[When] it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place,” President Joe Biden remarked last week in Japan. When it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”
Americans are paying for increasing gasoline expenses in the form of higher prices for commodities and groceries that are now more expensive to make and ship, in addition to sticker shock while fueling up. Overall prices are up 8.3% from last year, the quickest rate in 40 years, according to the latest Department of Labor data. The price of energy has increased by more than 30%. JPMorgan Chase analysts forecast that by August, Americans will be paying an average of $6.20 per gallon. Californians have already paid more than the national average of $6.20 per gallon to fill up this week.
Despite the extra hardship on American consumers, who have the lowest confidence in the country’s economy since 2009, according to Gallup, President Biden has simply added new limits to his administration’s war on domestic energy production. The Interior Department halted oil and gas projects from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, according to CBS News. Biden’s restart of oil and gas leases on federal property, announced in April to comply with a court decision, comes with a new set of taxes and rules, including a 50 percent increase in royalty fees from the extracted resources.
In a futile attempt to keep petrol prices down ahead of the November midterm elections, the president used the nation’s emergency oil reserves to release 1 million barrels of oil per day for 180 days in a “unprecedented” move. The publication, which began on May 15, coincided with daily petrol price records for more than a week. Past releases under this administration have made no difference in lowering gas prices, which are now about 100 percent higher than they were in the final month of President Donald Trump’s presidency.
The US uses around 20 million barrels of oil each day, according to the Department of Energy.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on The Federalists.
