President Joe Biden promised Monday to continue working to bring down the price of gasoline, less than three months after his historic release of oil from the strategic oil reserves.
“I’m going to work like the devil to get gas prices down,” Biden told attendees at the National Association of Counties 2022 Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.
The price of gasoline has spiked again after the president announced on November 23 he would release 50 million barrels of oil to help keep prices down, more than any release by an administration in modern history.
The average price of gasoline was about $2.37 when Biden took office and jumped to as high as $3.41 in November 2021 before he released oil from the strategic oil reserves in time for the Thanksgiving holiday driving season.
But average gas prices only fell to $3.27 a gallon before starting to tick up again.
As of Monday, the average gas prices are up to $3.48 a gallon while in some places across the country drivers are paying up to five or six dollars a gallon.
Biden tried to express solidarity with Americans who were getting hit hard by the high cost of gas.
“I grew up in a family where the price at the pump was felt in the kitchen,” Biden recalled. “Everybody knew. Everybody felt it. I understand.”
But Biden continues to push his anti-energy agenda, blocking key pipelines such as the Keystone XL project and trying to freeze new drilling on federal lands.
The president continues promoting electric vehicles as the solution to high gas prices, even though they only make up nine percent of passenger vehicles sold in the world.
Biden wants 50 percent of new cars to be electric or electric hybrids by the year 2030.
“For the hundreds of thousands of folks who bought one of those electric cars, they’re going to save $800 to $1000 in fuel costs this year,” he said, promoting electric vehicles as a solution to high gas prices in a November speech.