Fuel Prices Hit Record Highs After Biden Promised To Lower Costs

The average price of gasoline in the U.S. shot up to a new all-time record Tuesday, less than two months after President Joe Biden guaranteed lower prices.

The average pump price nationwide surged to $4.37 per gallon early Tuesday, the highest since March, according to AAA data. In February, Biden said he would “work like the devil” to bring prices down and in March, he promised gasoline would decline between 10-35 cents per gallon after he announced a historic release of U.S. emergency oil stocks.

President Joe Biden ordered a 50-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve release in November, a 30-million-barrel release on March 1 and a 180-million-barrel release on March 31 to combat rising gasoline prices. Energy prices worldwide have skyrocketed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“There’s little, if any, good news about fuel prices heading into summer, and the problem could become worse should we see an above average hurricane season, which could knock out refinery capacity at a time we badly need it as refined product inventories continue to plummet,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at research firm GasBuddy, said in a statement Tuesday.

Biden has also attempted to lower prices at the pump by temporarily scrapping an environmental regulation prohibiting the sale of gasoline with 15% ethanol. Experts and meat industry groups slammed the rule change, saying it would drive already-high food costs up.

But the Biden administration has dragged its feet on opening up domestic oil and gas drilling in light of surging consumer prices. The Department of the Interior has yet to hold a single onshore lease sale and chose not to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that a 2021 offshore lease sale was illegal.

“There is no doubt the White House is hoping that Americans simply become numb to yet another disastrous result of their energy failures, but the pain at the pump is too real and everyone intrinsically understands that Joe Biden is to blame,” Power the Future executive director Daniel Turner said in a statement.

“President Biden is now a two-time record holder for the highest gas prices, the most oil drained from the strategic reserve and re-injecting the term ‘inflation’ back into the national lexicon for the first time since the 1970s. This type of failure doesn’t happen by accident,” he continued. “The President’s green ideology is a man-made disaster and we’re all paying the price.”

Meanwhile, total oil production in the U.S. has declined for three consecutive months even as administration officials have argued it is at historic highs.