Gas prices hit new record as Republican senators blame Biden for curbing production

Average gas prices In the United States it hit a new record on Thursday, according to the AAA’s gas price calculator, after Republican senators criticized Biden Administration for a “virtual ban on new drilling.”

The national average cost of a regular gallon of gasoline Multiply $4,589 Early Thursday morning. That price beat Wednesday’s previous record of $4,567, which beat Tuesday’s record $4,523, which in turn surpassed Monday’s $4,470.

The price is according to the EU edges towards Oil sanctions on Russia amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. It also comes amid a record rise in inflation, with the Consumer Price Index reaching 8.3% in April, hovered near a 40-year high in March. The price hike also follows the Ministry of the Interior Cancellation An oil and gas lease sale of more than 1 million acres in the Cook Inlet area of ​​Alaska last week, which the DOI attributed to a “lack of interest in the industry.” The DOI has also canceled two leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

The White House has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the record hike in US gas prices, even coining the increase as “#PutinPriceHike” and vowing that President Biden will do everything in his power to protect Americans from “pain at the pump.”

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Biden announced, last month, that Environmental Protection Agency E15 gasoline – gasoline that uses a 15% ethanol blend – will be allowed to be sold across the country this summer. Biden also moved to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next six months. The president also called on Congress to make companies pay duties on idle oil wells and unproductive acres of federal land, with the goal of spurring new production.

However, critics have claimed that Biden’s actions on energy policies created a “supply problem” in the market.

Twenty Republican senators, led by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, sent a letter To Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is calling for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to quickly issue the required permits to bring online additional production from existing offshore federal oil and gas leases.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas (Fox News)

While the Biden administration and members of Congress blame the local oil and gas industry for stopping work on more than 9,000 drilling permits and millions of acres in “inactive leases,” permit delays from the NMFS are one example of the administration’s de facto ban on drilling. New – impeding domestic investment in oil and gas, exploration and production,” the senators wrote.

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The senators attributed the delays to “three mistakes the administration has admitted to making” due to arithmetic errors in calculating the number of endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2021 final rule governing offshore oil and gas exploration.

They added that it was “unacceptable that the agency’s erroneous calculations could limit access to safe and reliable domestic production of oil and gas through large, unnecessary and arbitrary permit delays.”

During his first week in office, Biden signed an executive order temporarily suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands. Administration resumed The new rent last month after lawsuits against the ban. The administration is appealing a ruling in which Judge James Keane, Trump’s appointee, overturned the ban.

Steve Milloy, a former Trump-Pence transition member at the Environmental Protection Agency and founder of JunkScience.com, blamed the president for a lack of US oil production.

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“I blame Biden for the lack of production,” Milloy told FOX Business last week. “The investment has taken him away.” He noted that the president would find “no excuse not to drill. They even tried to use the social cost of the carbon decision to stop leasing.”