White House Not Acting to Combat High Gas Prices, Citing Need to ‘Diversify’ Fuel Sources

The White House said Thursday they will not act immediately to alleviate high gas prices in the United States, citing the need to shift consumption to green energy.

Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden’s administration will continue to monitor the global markets, but she did not signal any possible actions to increase supply.

“No plan to take action at this time,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One during the president’s trip to Chicago.

She pointed to the administration’s view of the importance of shifting America’s energy needs to green energy sources.

“This situation really underscores the continued need to diversify our energy and fuel sources,” she said. “We can’t take our eye off the ball, as you can imagine, so we must invest and deploy clean energy solutions at home and around the world to strengthen both energy security and mitigate economic volatility.”

Jean-Pierre echoed comments from White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday, as she indicated that Biden saw global warming as a bigger priority than gas prices.

 

“Certainly, we all want to keep gasoline prices low, but the threat of the crisis — the climate crisis — certainly can’t wait any longer,” Psaki said.

The issue of high gas prices does not appear to be part of Biden’s public messaging priorities, as he spends his time promoting his multitrillion-dollar spending agenda and his plan to increase coronavirus vaccination rates for businesses.

In September, Biden blamed “bad actors and pandemic profiteers” for driving up gas prices.

“There’s a lot of evidence that gas prices should be going down, but they haven’t,” he said on September 16. “We’ll be taking a close look at that.”

Biden routinely speaks about not raising the gas tax, but he has not talked about increasing the domestic supply of oil.

In August, Psaki said the Biden administration was not working to increase domestic oil production, but, rather, focusing on OPEC nations to increase the production of foreign oil.

“The point we have made in these communications is that we’re not making a supply question here — or we’re not posing a supply question domestically,” she said.

Biden’s National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, expressed concerns during his trip to Brussels on Thursday that oil production overseas is not sufficient.

“The United States has a real concern that, for a variety of reasons, supply is not keeping up with recovering demand,” Sullivan said, promising “detailed diplomatic engagement” with energy producers.