Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) blamed oil companies for record-high gas prices across the United States.
Schakowsky argued that “Americans are suffering right now at the pump” due to oil companies raising their prices during the war in Ukraine. She also asserted the companies could be producing more oil than they currently are.
“[T]he oil companies made a decision rather in this crisis right now to raise the cost, to gouge the consumers, in some ways to, just to do what we say, and the name of the hearing today is ‘Gouged at the Gas Pump: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump,'” Schakowsky outlined. “They had an option to do that, to increase their ability right now not to have to frack, not to have to drill more, but to simply at their ability right now to raise the amount of gas that they put out.”
“You know, the oil companies have the capacity right now without having more leases, without doing more drilling to raise the amount of oil that they are producing right now and made a decision not to do that so that they could make more profits so that they could raise their prices so that they could do stock buybacks,” she added. “That is just a fact that that is the decision that they made. And right now, at this moment, when Americans are suffering right now at the pump and are really — especially low-income people — the oil companies have made a decision.”
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