President Joe Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, admitted Tuesday she did not know off the top of her head how many barrels of oil the United States economy consumes per day.
“I don’t have that number in front of me. I’m sorry,” she replied when asked about America’s daily oil consumption by CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe during the White House press briefing.
O’Keefe told Granholm the number was around 18 million and asked how Biden’s decision to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve would solve the problem of high gas prices.
Granholm said that Biden would release the oil from the Strategic Reserve over a period of weeks and that it would be “thoughtfully done” to lower prices.
She refused to detail a specific timeline for Americans to start experiencing lower gas prices, saying they were “hopeful” that it would help.
“I think people will start to see some tick down over the next bit…” she said.
She described the high gas prices as a “short-term pinch” while the Biden administration pursued more investments into clean energy.
“The situation shows we’ve got to stop relying on one source of energy, especially from volatile sources,” she said.
She said the administration was working to develop more green energy and promote electric vehicles so that America was no longer dependent on foreign oil.
“That is the best strategy long term to protect American consumers from these energy price shocks,” she said.