The national average price for a gallon of gas has skyrocketed to $4.00 – the highest national average in nearly 14 years.
The $4.00 national average is a 40 cent jump from last week and a 57 cent increase from just a month ago, AAA reports. On March 6 of last year, prices averaged $2.76 per gallon nationally. The national average is the highest it has been since July of 2008, CNBC reports. That month, gas price averages maxed out at 4.11 cents, which is the all-time record.
States on the West Coast and in the Northeast are seeing the highest prices in the country. On Sunday, AAA pinned California’s average gas price at $5.28 per gallon, while neighboring states, including Washington, Oregon, and Nevada, all had average prices of over $4.40 a gallon. Additionally, all northeast states – from Maryland and Delaware up through Maine – had averages exceeding $4.00 a gallon, according to AAA.
GOP Rep. Mike Rogers (AL), the ranking Republican on the House Armed Service Committee, recently told FM Talk 106.5 in Mobile, AL, that prices have jumped because of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, Breitbart News reported.
“The fact is, and this is true of all your listeners, our gas prices are going to go up because of what’s happening in Ukraine because of the disruptive nature it has had to the energy sector, period,” Rodgers said.
He went on to call for the reopening of the Keystone XL so America can begin producing its own oil once again:
And when we stop buying Russian oil, it will go up even more. It is going to be painful, but we should not be giving money to Russia to kill Ukrainians in this illegal war. What we need to be doing is reopening drilling on federal lands, reopening the XL pipeline that Biden stopped when he agreed to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We’ve got a lot of resources in this country that we can dramatically increase our production of natural gas and oil and be self-sustaining.
But he’s got to be willing to have the strength to tell the environmental climate change lobbyists that we’ve got to do this because he’s the one that cut them all off when he took power, when he took the presidency, and now we’re paying a price for it. And so, all the things that are about to happen as far as higher energy prices can be remedied here at home if he’ll just have the will and the leadership to make the decisions to make that happen.
While Rodgers and others on the right are calling on Biden to open up domestic oil productions, the Biden Administration has not been keen on the solution. While appearing on MSNBC’s 11th Hour Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said opening the pipeline would be “galloping after permanent solutions to immediate short term problems,” Breitbart News reported.
