Grand Canyon Times

The minor relief from sky-high pump prices was short-lived, namely in the state of Arizona where gas prices have soared in the last seven days.

With this, analysts continue to be critical of President Joe Biden's tapping into the nation's emergency oil supply, saying that domestic production is instead the solution to record-high prices.

"The administration may try to pretend otherwise, but President Biden’s keep-it-in-the-ground policies are a major reason Americans are facing an energy-cost crisis," Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said in a recent news release from the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. "Unleashing American energy production, not draining our own emergency supply, is the lasting solution to high prices." 

The cost of a gallon of gas in Arizona has risen 32 cents in the last week and 53 cents in the last month, AAA price data showed. The current average price per gallon is $4.50, compared to $4.18 per gallon seven days ago and $3.97 per gallon a month ago.

The Biden administration has leased fewer acres for offshore and federal land oil-and-gas drilling than any other administration in its early stages, dating back to the end of World War II; a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report said. Biden’s Interior Department leased 126,228 acres for drilling during his first 19 months in office. No other president since Richard Nixon in 1969-70 leased out fewer than 4.4 million acres at this stage in his first term.

After signing a series of executive orders that prioritized climate change in early 2021, Biden has taken action to remove fossil fuels entirely in America—from killing the Keystone XL pipeline to banning oil and gas leasing on federal land, which had provided approximately one-fifth of the total production in the United States as of 2019, a report issued by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources said.

Earlier this year in his effort to curb high gas prices, Biden began tapping into the nation's emergency crude oil supply in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). On March 31, he announced the release of up to 180 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR over a six-month period.

OPEC+, an influential alliance of some of the world’s most powerful oil producers, is reportedly considering their largest output cut since the start of the coronavirus pandemic; a CNBC report said this week. Analysts note that the number of barrels coming off the market will likely bring a return of crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel.

Amid rising fuel prices back in November 2021, OPEC and its oil-producing partners rejected Biden’s calls for increased production, retorting that if the United States believes the world’s economy needs more energy, then it should use the capability to increase production itself; a Forbes report said.

As of April 1, the SPR held 564.58 million barrels of oil in stock. As of Sept. 30, the SPR inventory stood at 416.4 million barrels of oil, a decrease of 148 million barrels since Biden's initial release.