Gas prices at the pump in the U.S. are going up again this spring and the Republicans are rushing to blame President Obama and his administration. However, there are many factors to consider before assigning any blame.
Gas prices at the pump are also going up in European countries and elsewhere. Is President Obama also to blame for those increases? Or, as with our country, are these increased prices due to uncertainty in the Middle East and Iran's repeated threat to cut off oil supplies? I, for one, would rather pay $5, or much more, per gallon for gas at the pump than to have even one American killed in another senseless Middle-Eastern war.
As the U.S. economy continues to get better, thanks to the Obama Administration, increased economic activity causes an increase in demand for petroleum products and increased demand can cause an increase in prices. So, in a good way, the Obama administration may have contributed to an increase in gas prices.
Oil refineries have to shut down occasionally for maintenance and most choose to do so in the spring since they have to change their gasoline from their winter formula to the summer one to reduce summertime pollution. These are anti-pollution standards, which make sense, which have been in effect for years before the Obama Administration. Every spring we see a bump in prices at the pump because of the temporary decrease in the supply of gasoline and the increased cost of the summertime formula.
The Republican solution is always to "drill, baby, drill!" without recognizing that last year, there where more oil rigs drilling in the U.S. than at any time during the eight years of the Bush administration. Also, last year, for the first time in years, the U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products. In other words, we gathered more petroleum than we consumed. Unfortunately, not all petroleum can be refined into gasoline.
Let's be slow to assign blame without considering all of the facts and give President Obama the credit he deserves for a better economy and increased petroleum production. We also need to accept our collective blame for increased prices at the pump by our continuing to drive gas guzzlers and not conserving energy as we've been told we need to do for over 40 years. Next time you complain about prices at the pump, look in the mirror, you might be seeing part of the problem.
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