Cambria Times

Gasoline prices are at a historic high, with the state of Pennsylvania seeing an average of $4.323 at the pump and the nation at $4.252. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine continuing to escalate, among a number of other underlying issues, the price is expected to increase in coming months and officials are trying to find ways to curb this.

One way that President Joe Biden has recently suggested to decrease gasoline prices is through importing fossil fuels from other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela instead of relying on domestic oil, according to a March 14 report by Fox Business. This was criticized by officials like Sen. Matt Rosendale of Montana as being hypocritical.

“The hypocrisy of this administration to continue to consume fossil fuels knowing full well that we can produce them here cleaner, safer, more environmentally sound and yet go to rely on tyrants around the world to produce them for the United States is just terrible,” Rosendale said to Fox Business.

Rosendale said the peak oil production was 13 million barrels per day in 2020 and is now down to 11 million per day. The price of crude oil is based on supply and demand availability, he explained, and said the supply can be replaced right now through opening the Keystone Pipeline which replaces imports from Russia. 

Biden has made a push to end fossil fuels and in 2019, when he was campaigning for president, he told a crowd in New Castle, N.H. that he “guaranteed” that they would be ending fossil fuels. According to a report by E&E News in December, the Biden Administration has announced that it will be ending federal funding for most international fossil fuels to try to push for leadership around the world on climate change. Biden has often stressed a zero-carbon initiative.

According to CNBC, Biden revoked a permit that was needed for a U.S. stretch of the 1,200 mile Keystone XL Pipeline in his first day in the Oval Office. This project reportedly would have brought 830,000 barrels of oil per day from the western tar sands of Canada to refiners in the U.S.

Recently a YouTube video was released of Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock speaking with Georgia Conservation Voters Executive Director Brionte McCorkle where he said that the U.S. needs to move away from fossil fuel usage, calling it a thing “of the past.” He also said he would be open to discussing a carbon tax.

“I think we need to be moving away from an economy that is based on fossil fuels,” Warnock said in a 2020 interview. “That’s the way of the past and we need to moving toward the future. The issue of taxes and how much, that is a conversation that I think, you know, I want to participate in. I’ll bring my values and commitment to getting there, to the conversation.”

34N22, which is a Republican super PAC that supports Herschel Walker who is running against Warnock, plans on running the YouTube video that it released last week. Stephen Lawson of 34N22 criticized Warnock, saying it was part of his “radical, far-left agenda.”

"Raphael Warnock helped kill the Keystone Pipeline and American energy development—causing Georgia’s gas prices to spike and our country to lose its energy independence,"  34N22’s Stephen Lawson told the Washington Free Beacon.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Warnock’s Communications Director Meredith Brasher defended him saying that he is “leading the effort to suspend the federal gas tax to bring down costs for Georgians and Americans.