The average gas price for the week ending May 20 reached $4.59 a gallon after eleven days of record-high consecutive price growths.
Global energy prices are proceeding to worsen as the European Union promised further oil sanctions on Russia over its attack on Ukraine.
Record-high inflation and high fuel costs are starting to cause a slowdown in the U.S. economy, with the consumer price index increasing 8.3 percent in April from a year prior, just below March’s 40-year high.
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Republicans in the Senate and the House slammed the Biden administration for its “de facto ban on new drilling” after news that average gas prices in the United States hit a record $4.589 a gallon on May 19, according to a gas price report from AAA.
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Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and twenty different Republican senators addressed a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo calling for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to immediately issue permits asked to bring additional production online from existing offshore federal oil and gas leases to ease the disaster.
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“While the Biden Administration and Members of Congress fault the domestic oil and gas industry for sitting idle on over 9,000 drilling permits and millions of acres in ‘inactive leases’, NMFS’s permitting delays represent one example of the Administration’s de facto ban on new drilling—impeding domestic oil and gas investment, exploration, and production,” wrote the senators.
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“It is unacceptable that agency miscalculations have restricted access to safe, secure, and reliable domestic oil and gas production through substantial, unnecessary, and arbitrary permitting delays,” they continued.
The agency admitted that the delays in issuing drilling permits were driven by three mathematical mistakes that miscalculated the number of endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico in its 2021 final ruling governing offshore oil and gas exploration.
Biden in his first week in office in 2021, had signed an executive order temporarily suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands for environmental reasons.
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The administration was forced to resume new leasing last month after losing a court challenge against the ban, which it is continuing to appeal.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, in a May 20 interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, blamed the Democrat administration and the radical left for declaring war on domestic gas production and excusing White House energy policies by blaming the fuel shortages on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
“The gas prices are so high because Joe Biden and the radical left have, in essence, declared war on U.S. energy production. Just as you said, Maria, day number one, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline,” announced Reschenthaler.