Billy Long: President Biden's policies have created gas price crisis

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

Have you ever noticed gas prices rise at a multiple of three to what they fall? 

I’ve written in this column before of how President Biden’s policies have created this crisis. He openly attacks the oil companies and pursues regulatory policies that raise prices at the pump. Then when people started hurting from the high price, he blamed the same oil companies he has over-regulated. He then tried blaming the price of gas on Putin’s war in Ukraine, but the American public didn't fall for it.

President Biden has come up with some pretty ignorant ideas of how to solve this problem, which is of his own making. He needed to immediately reduce regulations on the oil industry so they can start producing more. 

Instead, he goes to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other countries on bended knee to beg for oil. When this plan failed he decided to tap into our Strategic Petroleum Reserves. These are the same reserves that President Trump had the good sense to fill up at bargain basement prices when oil was cheap. Now Biden is emptying them to try and lower gas prices.

The fatal flaw here is that this oil is not going to beef up American supply. Instead - are you sitting down - nearly a million barrels have gone to a Chinese company. How is shipping oil to China going to help lower gas prices here at home? It ain't. 

President Biden is allowing our oil to go to a Chinese company, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This is the same CCP whose ineptitude gave the world COVID, and who is committing genocide against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. We shouldn’t be selling our oil to China for any reason.

 

President Biden doesn’t ever learn. Instead of unleashing American oil production, he has doubled down on his ill-conceived and failed policies. We can't be selling our oil to China in the hopes that it will magically lower gas prices. 

All we need to do is end the overregulation of American oil companies, so that we can start producing more of our oil here. That would lower gas prices dramatically. We were a net exporter of oil on January 20, 2021 until 12 noon because of President Trump's actions when he came into office, but unfortunately President Biden had a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome and has undone many of President Trump’s successful policies just to spite him.