White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has recently issued the claim that President Joe Biden will be able to successfully reduce the overall impact of these surprise oil production cuts slated to come from OPEC on gas prices.
OPEC, a massive economic bloc built out of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other countries with a large share of global oil production, unexpectedly stated that they would drop their overall output by 1.15 million barrels per day starting in May through the end of 2024. Brent crude, which is the benchmark for all fuel obtained from the Atlantic, spiked from where it sat at $79 late last week up to $85 per barrel as of this past Wednesday.
A number of analysts have issued predictions that such a move could end up increasing gas prices throughout the United States by close to $0.30 per gallon on average. As reported by data coming from AAA, the current national average for the price of gas sits at $3.53 per gallon.
The gathered media questioned Jean-Pierre as part of a Tuesday press briefing about the White House response to the move from OPEC, which happens just prior to the extremely busy summer travel months. Jean-Pierre responded that the administration would do "everything that we can to make sure that we lower costs and meet the American people where they are," claiming that policies set up by Biden have previously mitigated spikes in fuel prices.
"Analysts had said last year that prices were going to go up, and that did not happen. If anything, in fact, gasoline prices went down by $1.50 when it was at its peak this past summer. A lot of that is because of the actions that this president took," she stated. "Because of what the president did, because of the policies that he put forward, because of the actions that he put forward, we have seen those prices go down."
On numerous occasions, Biden has claimed that the United States saw the "fastest gas price decline in eight years" and annualized headline inflation, which has dropped for "six months" due to the implementation of his economic policies. Both claims fully ignore the express reality that the cost of energy and the overall price level increases were much lower prior to his taking office: national average gas prices were $3.42 per gallon at the end of March 2023, as expressed in data from the Energy Information Administration, marking a 44% spike from $2.38 per gallon in January 2021.
Jean-Pierre made the claim that the Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside a sum of $369 billion to go to various renewable energy initiatives, helped to reduce fuel costs by raising "energy security." she also claimed that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act, a pair of landmark legislative actions from the Biden administration, have been "critical and important" to lowering prices for fuel.