Oil prices hit $115 a barrel on Friday, raising gas prices across the country yet again as the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to affect Americans filling up at the pump.
The latest increase saw San Francisco, California, become the first U.S. state to record gas prices higher than $5 a gallon, according to Fox Business. While San Francisco is seeing more than $5 a gallon, the state average for a gallon of regular gasoline in California is $4.94, a marked increase over the national average of $3.728.
“It’s been quite ugly as gas prices rise nationally, but nowhere has the pain been more significant than California, where prices have breached the $5 gallon mark,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, told the outlet late last week.
De Haan went on to warn that San Francisco’s gas prices would hit $5.35 per gallon by the end of the month.
Fox Business also reported that “the United States and other major governments agreed to release 60 million barrels of crude from stockpiles to stabilize supplies, but it failed to calm anxiety over Russia’s attack on Ukraine as oil prices still rose.”
De Haan, however, was not convinced the release of barrels would do much to help stabilize gas prices, saying the loss of 10 million barrels a day of oil production “can’t be offset by meager releases of oil.”
“It would likely need to be more like 100-200 million barrels to have much effect,” he told Fox Business.
The Biden administration has struggled with inflation and rising gas prices, choosing not to use Republican solutions to fix the problems and instead doubling down on Democratic platitudes. The Daily Wire reported last week that corporate media pundits, Democratic politicians, and even Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have suggested or been open to buying oil from Iran, a country that sponsors terrorists and refers to America as “the great Satan.” From The Daily Wire:
“Could the president possibly consider authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, working something out with Iran?” MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday night’s episode of “The 11thHour.”
“Look, the president has said that all options are on the table,” replied Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “But we also need to make sure we’re not galloping after permanent solutions to immediate short-term problems,” he said, possibly out of concern that reviving the U.S. energy sector may retard the Biden administration’s attempt to force Americans into relying on renewable energy sources.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) responded to Buttigieg’s response by calling it “a word salad of bureaucratic BS,” adding that the “left wing in Washington is doubling down on energy illiteracy instead of learning more about real energy security solutions.”
The idea of buying oil from Iran – rather than producing more oil at home like America did under the Trump administration – was also suggested by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who said “this is one possible solution” for those who wanted to cut off Russia’s oil revenues and are “worried about inflation and spiking oil prices,” in response to a tweet from The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper, who tweeted: “Iran has 103 million barrels of oil loaded up on tankers and ready to go.”