By Chris Matthews
Biden administration officials are taking solace in recent declines in retail gasoline prices, which have fallen by an average of 21 cents per gallon over the past month, according to GasBuddy.
Brian Deese, President Biden’s National Economic Council director, said Thursday that while gas prices /zigman2/quotes/210286597/delayed RB00 +0.42% remain “unacceptably high,” U.S. consumers are “seeing some moderation, and that moderation is important.”
“The release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sounds esoteric to people [but] oil-market analysts … will say it was singlehandedly responsible for keeping oil prices from going higher,” Desse added in an interview with Bloomberg News.
The Biden adviser also noted the president has been working with oil refiners “to try to keep refinery capacity online” and has pushed for a temporary gas-tax holiday that could further produce savings for consumers at the gas pump.
Biden announced a plan in March to release roughly 1 million barrels of oil per day from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve through October. About 5 million of the barrels released so far have been exported by American refiners abroad to destinations including Europe, according to a Tuesday report in Reuters.
That export acknowledgment invited Republican criticism of the Biden administration even if the exports represent a small fraction of the total oil released from the reserve over the past several months.
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