According to the AAA travel agency tracker, the national average for a gallon of normal unleaded gasoline hit $4.97 on Thursday, a new high. Diesel, which is essential for industrial and agricultural machines, set a fresh high of $5.74. The soaring prices are part of a post-Memorial Day spike, with new highs being set every day in June.
President Joe Biden’s Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, claimed on CNN on Tuesday that there was nothing the administration could do to bring down the skyrocketing prices.
After the administration canceled several oil and gas projects from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, Raimondo remarked, “The reality is that there isn’t much more to be done,”
Biden ordered the “unprecedented” release of 1 million barrels of oil from the nation’s emergency petroleum reserves for 180 days in an attempt to artificially lower gas prices. The bulk of the release began on May 15, which means it will end right after the November midterm elections, as American voters grapple with sticker shock at the petrol pump and inflation soaring at its fastest rate in four decades.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the release has done nothing to lower gas prices in a country that consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. Gas prices are about $2 more than they were a year ago, but they were already rising before Biden’s initial attack on the oil and gas industry.
The Biden administration said in April that it will resume oil and gas leases on public lands, following a federal court judgment that overturned the suspension that Biden signed on his first day in office. The White House, on the other hand, has made it clear that it wants to take its time with fresh drilling land sales.
Soon after the announcement, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked, “It’s not in line with the president’s policy, which is to ban federal leasing,” “We don’t feel they are needed.”
With the restart of federal land leases, the Department of the Interior announced a slew of new taxes and regulations, including an 80% reduction in the amount of territory accessible for exploration from what was originally proposed.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on The Federalists.
