Gas prices have remained over $5.00 per gallon for 7 consecutive days.
Climbing to a record high of about $5.04 on Wednesday, Gas prices surpassed the $5.00 mark on June 9 and have not looked back.
The record-high prices come as President Joe Biden has waged a war on American oil, which includes driving up private and public financing costs of oil drilling, halting drilling on public lands, and canceling the Keystone pipeline.
Biden’s anti-energy policies are the fulfillment of a campaign promise. In 2020, he told a cheering crowd that if he were to become president, he would wage a war on the American oil industry by terminating subsidies and drilling feasibility.
Gas prices reflect his policies. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Americans will pay $450 more for gas in 2022 than they did last year on an inflation-adjusted basis.
“Motorists in the US are now spending nearly three quarters of a billion dollars more on gasoline every day than a year ago,” GasBuddy estimated.
As Biden has successfully waged a war on American energy, he has simultaneously blamed American oil companies for not pumping out enough product. On Wednesday, Biden sent a letter to Marathon Petroleum Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP, and Shell. He also requested they produce more oil.
Biden’s changing communication tactics may not drive down the cost of oil. JPMorgan commodities analysts predicted that gas prices may increase to more than $6.00 per gallon before Labor Day due to demand.
However, in response to critics who argue that the U.S. needs to increase oil production, White House Climate Czar John Kerry said Wednesday, “We absolutely don’t,” dismissing this argument as “a false narrative.”
KERRY: “We absolutely don’t” need to drill for more oil and gas.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 14, 2022
Polling shows that 53 percent of voters believe Biden is trying to raise the price of gas to force citizens to use less fossil fuel, according to polling by Convention of States Action/Trafalgar Group.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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