Column: The Biden Gas Crisis: It doesn’t have to be this way

Last week, the price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline soared to new levels across the United States and here in Wisconsin. Never in our nation’s history has the national average price of gas hit $4.50/gallon. We’ve got a real problem on our hands, and it is a direct result of the policies of the Biden Administration. This time last year, gas was about $3.04/gallon and before President Biden was sworn in gas hovered around $2.20/gallon nationally. The extraordinary cost of fuel is impacting everyone from drivers and truckers to farmers and businesses.

There is no doubt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the global oil market causing prices to rise. However, prices were soaring long before war came to Ukraine and our current dilemma would not be this bad had President Biden not waged war on the American energy industry first, in the name of the Green New Deal. The day he was sworn in, Biden immediately cancelled the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project we need to reduce our dependence on OPEC and Russia, and that directly led to the loss of hundreds of jobs in Wisconsin and spiking fuel costs. Since then, Biden has bogged down domestic investment with nonsensical regulations and proposed stripping American energy producers of tax incentives which give them a competitive edge globally.

It's these decisions by President Biden that caused the steady rise in fuel prices throughout 2021 and that has carried over into 2022. The Biden Administration needs to reverse course immediately, repealing damaging regulatory actions against U.S. energy producers and instilling confidence in domestic companies. We need to stabilize and lower the price of fuel and we can do that by unleashing production here at home to offset the supply of energy we no longer import to quickly to bring relief at the pump.

To reduce the cost of fuel, energy companies need to be able to work efficiently and trust that their investments won’t be spoiled by further heavy-handed regulations from Washington. U.S. natural gas and oil production leads the world in safety and environmental standards, we have no reason not to lead on this issue and leverage our abundant resources, especially now.